. 


ABROAD  WITH  MARK  TWAIN 
AND  EUGENE  FIELD 


ABROAD  WITH 
MARK  TWAIN 
and  EUGENE  FIELD 

Tales  TheyToldto  aFellow  Correspondent 

By 

HENRY  W.  FISHER 


NICHOLAS   L.  BROWN 

NETWORK  MCMXXII 


COPYRIGHT,  1922 

h 

NICHOLAS  L.  BROWN 


P  Sissl 

Fir 


MA  IK/ 


To 

MARIAN  PHELPS 
(Mrs.  Phelps-Pcters) 

whose  youth,  beauty  and  cleverness 
delighted  Mark  Twain  in  his 
troubled  Berlin  days. 


4831 19 


EDITOR'S  NOTE 

Along  in  /pop,  Fisher  and  I  were  working 
for  the  same  newspaper,  Fisher  as  a  special 
writer  and  I  in  the  art  department.  We  both 
subsequently  escaped \  but  that  is  another  story. 
Just  then  I  happened  to  be  working  on  the 

BIBLIOGRAPHY     OF    MARK    TWAIN     (Harper y 

1910).  Fisher  told  me  that  he  was  going  to 
do  some  magazine  stories  on  Mark  and  prom 
ised  to  let  me  have  proofs,  but  a  week  or  two 
later  he  went  away  on  one  of  his  periodical 
trips  to  Europe,  and  I  lost  track  of  him  for 
several  years. 

Some  time  in  1921, 1  met  him  on  Broadway, 
New  York.  "Hello,  Fisher,"  says  I,  "where 
have  you  been,  what  are  you  doing,  and  where 
are  those  flowing  whiskers  you  used  to  sport?" 

"Hello,  Johnson,"  replied  Fisher,  peering 
at  me  through  his  thick  glasses,  "I  am  just 
back  from  London,  the  air  raids  scared  off  my 
whiskers,  and  my  eyesight  has  become  so  bad, 
I  am  only  fit  to  be  a  'dictator'  now. " 

"Well)"  says  I,  continuing  our  conversation 
of  many  years  ago,  "where  are  those  Mark 
Twain  yarns  you  promised  me?  " 

"In  my  head,'  he  said;  "never  had  time  to 
put  them  on  paper"  "You  know,"  he  added, 
"  old  Mark  and  I  spent  many  weeks  and  months 
together  in  Berlin  and  Vienna  and  frequently 
met  in  London  and  Paris,  not  to  mention  more 
out-of-the-way  places,  and  if  I  really  put  my 
mind  to  it,  I  can  remember  reams  of  Mark 


Vll 


Twain  s  sayings,  while  others  are  available  in 
notebooks,  diaries  and  such  I  kept  off  and  on. 
And  come  to  think  of  it,  I  can  tell  you  about 
Eugene  Field  over  there  as  welL  I  happened 
to  occupy  an  editorial  position  in  London,  while 
Gene  tried  to  set  the  Thames  afire  and— failed, 
poor  chap." 

"  Then,"  says  I,  "come  up  to  the  studio  any 
day,  to-morrow  if  you  like.  I  will  have  a  stenog 
rapher  there  and  you  can  start  dictating  your 
stories  and  we  shall  set  the  world  laughing,  put 
ting  them  in  a  book. " 

Fisher  did,  and  here's  the  book. 

Twain  and  Field  did  not  expatriate  them 
selves  to  the  extent  of  other  gifted  Americans — 
Henry  James,  Bret  Harte,  Whistler,  Abbey  and 
Sargent — yet  Twain  settled  down  for  months, 
and  even  years,  in  various  European  countries^ 
while  Field  tried,  during  a  hundred  days  or 
more,  to  make  a  go  of  it  in  London,  before  ca 
pitulating  to  climate  and  home-hunger. 

Previous  glimpses  of  these  two  great  American 
humorists  during  their  several  sojourns  in  Eu 
rope  have  come  to  us  almost  wholly  through 
their  letters  to  friends  at  home.  Of  course,  a 
man  reveals  himself  to  a  great  extent  in  his 
private  correspondence  and  diaries,  but,  even  soy 
the  picture  is  never  complete;  he  cannot  quite 
see  himself  as  others  see  him.  How  Twain 
and  Field  appeared  to  another  American  in 
their  strange  environment  is  here  set  down  for 
the  first  time. 


Vlll 


Fisher  was  in  a  unique  position  for  contact 
with  these  men,  both  of  whom  he  had  met  previ 
ously  in  the  United  States.  He  was  one  of  the 
most  widely  known  American  correspondents 
in  foreign  parts;  he  had  written  for  the  Dal- 
ziel  News  Company  (then  a  sort  of  United 
Press ',  dealing  with  the  European  continent) 
letters  from  Paris,  Berlin,  St.  Petersburg,  Copen 
hagen ,  Belgrade -,  Vienna ,  Budapest \  etc.)  that 
were  telegraphed  all  over  the  world.  He  had 
acted  as  correspondent  for  the  New  York  Tele 
gram,  the  New  York  World,  the  New  York  Sun, 
the  London  Evening  News,  the  Paris  Messenger 
and  the  St.  James  Gazette;  he  had  written 
special  articles  for  Harper  s  Weekly,  printed 
alongside  of  Mark  Twain  s  contributions.  He 
knew,  or  at  least  had  a  smattering  knowledge 
of,  all  European  languages;  he  knew  every 
European  capital  or  resort  by  eyesight  and  in 
sight;  he  had  met  the  great  personages  of  Europe. 
So  it  was  quite  in  the  nature  of  things  that 
Mark  and  Field  ran  across  Fisher  at  the  com 
mon  meeting  places  in  foreign  parts,  the  U.  S. 
Embassies  and  Legations;  likewise  that  these 
American  writers  accepted  his  guidance  in  the 
strange  world  they  found  themselves  in. 

Paine,  Twain  s  great  biographer,  speaks  of 
Fisher  s  contact  with  the  famous  author  (vol. 
H>  P-  935>  ''Mark  Twain:  A  Biography"}. 
Fisher  s  memory,  trained  by  years  of  inter 
viewing,  when  no  notes  could  be  taken  in  the 
presence  of  the  interviewed,  has  retained  the 


IX 


substance  and  the  manner,  if  not  always  the 
exact  language p,  used  and  exchanged. 

Some  writers  reveal  themselves  only  in  their 
written ,  carefully  edited  works,  but  Twain  s 
unique  personality  was  as  eminent,  as  inspir 
ing  and  as  lasting  in  his  daily  walks  and  talks 
as  in  his  books  and  lectures.  In  so  far  as 
Fisher  reproduces  the  meaning  of  Twain's  obser 
vations  on  persons  and  things  abroad,  these 
anecdotes  are  of  value  to  all  friends  and  admirers 
of  the  great  humorist.  The  same  applies  to 
Eugene  Field,  though,  of  course,  in  a  more 
limited  degree. 

MERLE  JOHNSON. 

New  York, 
January,  1922. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Editor's  Note vii 

Author's  Preface xv 

How  Mark  Would  Safeguard  England 25 

Mark  Philosophized  on  Willie 33 

Mark  —  Regicide 34 

The  Funniest  Speech  Mark  Ever  Heard 36 

Monarchical  Atavism 42 

Democratic  Mark  and  the  Austrian  Aristocracy . .  43 

Phil  Sheridan's  Friend 45 

"  Elizabeth  Was  a  He, "  Said  Mark 47 

Mark,  the  Sleight-of-hand  Man 55 

Mark  and  the  Imperial  Mistress 57 

Mark  on  Lynch  Law 59 

Recollections  of  King  Charles  and  Grant 62 

Mark  Missed  Gallows-land 64 

Think  of  Her  Sorrow 66 

Breaking  the  News  Gently 67 

Dukes  and  Unborn  Car  Horses 69 

"Pa  Used  to  Be  a  Terrible  Man" 70 

Mark  on  the  Berlin  Cops 71 

The  Sausage  Room 74 

Mark's  Glimpse  of  Schopenhauer 77 

"Murderer"  Bliicher  in  Oxford 86 

Mark's  Human  Side 88 

An  Australian  Surprise 90 

Mark  in  France  and  Italy 92 

xi 


Why  Mark  Wouldn't  Like  to  Die  Abroad 93 

The  Left  Hand  Didn't  Know 95 

American  Humorists 96 

Telepathy  or  Suggestion 97 

Trying  to  Be  Serious  Didn't  Work 99 

Assorted  Beauties 100 

Mark's  Children  Knew  Him 101 

Mark,  Dogs,  Dagoes,  and  Cats 102 

The  Tragedy  of  Genius 103 

Kilties  and  the  Lassie 105 

A  Wise  Provision  of  Providence 107 

The  Awful  German  Language 108 

Artist  or  Photographer no 

Mark  Interviewed  the  Barber  about  Harry  Thaw .  112 

His  Portrait — a  Mirror 115 

Mark,  Bismarck,  Lincoln,  and  Darwin 116 

Mark  at  the  Stock  Exchange,  Vienna 120 

Mark  and  the  Prussian  Lieutenant 121 

Mark  Studies  the  Costermonger  Language 123 

That  Beautiful  Funeral 125 

Ada's  Beast  of  a  Man 1 26 

Jealousy  in  Lowland 127 

The  Troubles  of  Liz 128 

The  French  Madame 130 

The  Great  Disappointment 134 

Rheumatism  and  Prodding 13-7 

On  Literary  Friendships 138 

Bayard  Taylor's  German 139 

xii 


:.: 

'«"  "  "  "J- 

_  .~  _ " : "  "  -"  r 

^L*rx  CjotArrestod IB BCTHB.  ..............._     i$4 

1>_,,_-V»    »K  -i  f    TT" in*» 

j>-ocs  tnat  werai  t 


ife 

Mark  Thoi^t  Joan  of  Arc  Was  Sbndered..  164 

166 

:- 

Mark  and  the  Girls  that  Lore  a  Lord i6S 

Mark's  Martyrdom 173 

Slang  Not  in  Mark  s  Dictionary -: 

Mir.<      N  ;   ^-; ~  :.z ~ .-~.  ~-~~ 

Mark,  Poetry,  and  Art. 17! 

Mark  Sheds  Light  on  En^sh  Kstory ~ 

Mark  Explains  Dean  SwifY iSj 

Mark  in  Tragedy  and  Comedy I§S 

"  Ambition  Is  a  Jade  that  More  Than  One  Man 

Can  Ride" 190 

V.-.-N  :..«  -i  V-i -r ._::-  :c: 

Mark  in  England 194 

Why  Mark  Was  Uncomfortable  in  the  King  of 

Sweden's  Presence 19^ 

Mark's  Idea  of  High  Art 

Mark  Meets  King  Leopold— Almost . .  199 

xiii 


I)' 


Sizing  Up  of  Aristocracy  by  Mark 201 

The  Bald-headed  Woman 204 

When  a  Publisher  Dines  and  Wines  You 205 

Mark  in  Politics 208 

Mark  on  "  Royal  Honors  " 209 

American  Women  the  Prettiest 212 

Where  Tay  Pay  Isn't  Tay  Pay 213 

The  Man  Who  Didn't  Get  Used  to  Hanging.  ...  214 

Stray  Sayings  of  Mark 218 

Eugene  Field  and  His  Troubles  in  Chicago 223 

More  of  Eugene  Field's  Trials  in  London 227 

Gene,  a  "Success  of  Curiosity" 230 

Dire  Consequences  of  American  Horseplay 233 

Field's  Library  of  Humor 240 

Those  German  Professors 241 

Eugene  Field  and  Northern  Lore 243 

Little  Boy  Blue 246 


xiv 


PREFACE 

To  begin  with,  of  course,  I  don't  claim  that 
all  these  stories  are  absolutely  first  hand.  I 
sometimes  jotted  down  what  I  heard  Mark  say, 
or  stored  his  talk  in  some  compartment  of 
memory,  only  to  hear  him  repeat  the  yarn, 
after  a  space,  in  quite  different  fashion. 

"You  remind  me  of  Charles  II,"  I  said  to 
him  once,  referring  to  that  confusing  habit 
of  his,  and  was  going  to  "substantiate"  when 
he  interrupted. 

"I  can  guess  what  you  mean,  but  never 
mind,  for  all  you  know  I  may  be  Charlie's 
reincarnation.  Charles,  you  wanted  to  say, 
had  only  three  stories  up  his  sleeve  and  these 
he  told  over  and  over  again  for  new  ones  to 
Nell  and  the  rest  of  the  bunch.  And  varied 
them  so  cleverly  and  disguised  them  so  well, 
that  his  audience  never  got  on  to  the  fact  that 
His  Majesty  had  been  chestnutting.  As  for 
me,  I  can  only  hope  that  I  will  succeed  as 
well  as  Charlie  did." 

In  Berlin  I  once  heard  Susie  Clemens — ill- 
fated,  talented  girl,  who  died  so  young — say 
to  her  father:  "Grouchy  again!  They  do 
say  that  you  can  be  funny  when  company 
is  around — too  bad  that  you  don't  consider 
Henry  Fisher  company. " 

"Out  of  the  mouth  of  sucklings,"  quoth 
Clemens  and  gave  Susie  the  twenty  marks 
she  was  after,  and  he  kissed  her:  "Goodby, 


XY 


little  blackmailer,  and  don't  tell  your  mamma 
how  you  worked  that  fool  papa  of  yours. " 

Indeed,  Mark  was  not  always  the  humorist 
the  public  mind  pictures  him.  Very  often, 
for  long  hours  at  a  time,  in  our  intercourse 
extending  over  thirty  years,  he  was  decidedly 
serious,  while  at  other  times  he  grumbled  at 
everything  and  everybody.  His  initial  object 
in  choosing  me  for  his  "bear-leader"  was  to 
add  to  his  stock  of  knowledge  on  foreign 
affairs  and  to  correct  erroneous  ideas  he  might 
have  acquired  from  books.  Since  I  had  resided 
many  years  on  the  Continent,  and  had  com 
mand  of  the  languages  he  lacked,  he  asked 
me  to  pilot  him  around  Berlin,  Paris,  and 
Vienna,  and  on  such  occasions  his  talk  was 
more  often  deep  and  learned  than  laughter- 
provoking.  In  an  afternoon  or  morning's 
work — getting  atmosphere,  /.  e.,  "the  hang 
of  things"  German  or  Austrian,  as  Mark 
called  it— he  sometimes  dropped  two  or  three 
memorable  witticisms,  but  familiar  inter 
course  in  the  long  run  left  no  doubt  of  the 
fact  that  a  very  serious  vein  bordering  on 
melancholy  underlay  his  mask  of  bonhomie. 
On  the  other  hand  a  closer  or  more  intelli 
gent  student  of  life  never  lived.  He  was 
as  conscientious,  as  true,  and  as  simple  as 
Washington  Irving. 

Those  occasional  lapses  into  dejection  not 
withstanding,  it  struck  me  that  Mark  extracted 
his  humor  out  of  the  bounty  and  abundance 
of  his  own  nature.  Hence  his  tinkling  gro- 


XVI 


tesquerie,  unconventionally,  whimsicality, 
play  of  satire,  and  shrieking  irony,  between 
touches  of  deep  seriousness. 

Really  much  of  Mark's  wisdom  began  and 
ended  in  humor  and  vice  versa.  There  was 
originality  and  penetration  in  everything  he 
said.  Howells  has  said  of  Mark:  "If  a  trust 
of  his  own  was  betrayed — Clemens  was  ruth 
lessly,  implacably  resentful."  For  my  part, 
in  thirty  years,  I  never  heard  him  speak  ill 
of  any  living  person,  except  one  or  two  self- 
appointed  editors. 

I  first  met  him  in  Chicago  during  the  Grant 
celebration,  November,  1879,  when  I  heard 
him  give  the  toast  on  babies,  but  I  do  not 
remember  a  word  of  his  speech,  for  while  it 
lasted  I  was  sitting  next  to  Grant  and  Grant 
kept  me  busy  watching  and  attending  his 
immutable  and  eloquent  silence. 

When  Mark  and  I  were  fellow  correspond 
ents  in  Berlin,  I  met  his  wife  and  family 
frequently  at  their  home,  at  the  Hotel  Royal, 
and  on  public  occasions.  The  three  girls,  Jean, 
Susie,  and  Clara,  were  in  their  teens,  and  both 
lovely  and  lively.  At  that  time  the  late  Wil 
liam  Walter  Phelps  of  New  Jersey  was  Amer 
ican  minister  in  Berlin.  We  had  been  friends 
in  America  and  Phelps  had  also  known  Mr. 
Clemens  in  the  States  socially.  Like  every 
body  else,  he  delighted  in  Mark's  stimulating 
company.  Among  other  distinguished  Amer 
icans  in  Berlin,  in  1891,  was  Ward  Hill  Lamon, 
Abraham  Lincoln's  Springfield  law  partner, 


XVll 


a 


later  his  private  secretary,  and  Marshal  of 
the  District  of  Columbia  during  Lincoln's 
administration.  Lamon  was  the  author  of 
"The  Life  of  Abraham  Lincoln"  and  "Recol 
lections  of  Abraham  Lincoln. "  These  books 
the  Lincoln  family  did  not  enjoy. 

When  the  Clemenses  went  to  live  in  Vienna, 
six  years  later,  I  happened  to  be  correspondent 
at  the  Austrian  capital  for  Dalziel's  News, 
London,  and  Galignani's  Messenger,  Paris, 
and  as  Mark,  used  to  the  Berlin  dialect,  found 
it  difficult  "to  acclimatize  his  German,  mak 
ing  it  chime  in  with  the  Vienna  variety"  (his 
own  description),  I  was  again  much  in  demand 
as  interpreter,  pathfinder,  and  general  ciceroiie. 

In  later  years  I  met  Mark  repeatedly  during 
his  several  London  seasons,  for,  liking  his 
society,  I  called  at  Brown's  or  his  apartment 
whenever  he  came  to  England,  myself  being 
engaged  in  literary  work  there.  We  were 
never  on  terms  of  particular  intimacy — hail- 
fellows-well-met,  yes!  "Hello, Mark"— "Hel 
lo  Henry  W. — you  here  again?"  We  stuck 
verbally  to  the  formula  of  the  old  Chicago 
days,  and  I  was  glad  to  be  of  use  to  him  when 
it  suited  his  fancy.  Moreover,  I  was  vastly 
interested  in  Mark's  books,  short  stories,  and 
essays,  but  found  him  rarely  inclined  to  talk 
shop  unless  it  was  the  other  fellow's. 

Rudyard  Kipling  he  used  to  designate  "the 
militant  spokesman  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  races, " 
and  he  sometimes  spoke  with  near-admiration 
of  Bernard  Shaw,  "whose  plays  are  popular 


xvni 


from  London  to  St.  Petersburg,  from  Chris- 
tiania  to  Madrid,  from  Havre  to  Frisco,  and 
from  Frisco  to  the  Antipodes,  while  mine  are 
nowhere." 

After  I  visited  Tolstoy  at  Yasnaya  Polyana 
he  said  to  me:  "Lucky  dog,  you  have  broken 
bread  with  the  man  who  commands,  and 
almost  monopolizes,  the  thought  of  the 
world." 

That  the  universality  of  his  humor  and  its 
humanity  made  him  the  peer  of  these  great 
writers,  of  all  his  contemporaries  in  fact, 
seemed  to  be  far  from  his  thoughts.  His 
verbal  humor,  like  his  fancy,  was  as  simple 
in  form  and  as  direct  in  application  as  were 
the  army  orders  of  the  great  Napoleon.  He 
liked  to  hear  me  say  that,  for  he  knew  that 
some  of  my  forbears  had  been  individually 
attached  to  the  person  of  the  Emperor.  But 
the  most  he  ever  said  concerning  his  author 
ship  and  other  writers  in  his  own  line  was 
this: 

"I  pity  the  fellow  who  has  to  create  a 
dialect  or  paraphrase  the  dictionary  to  get 
laughs.  Like  you  and  Susie"  (referring  to  his 
oldest  daughter)  "I  can't  spell,  but  I  have 
never  stooped  to  spell  cat  with  a  *k*  to  get 
at  your  funny  bone.  I  love  a  drink,  but  I 
never  encouraged  drunkenness  by  harping  on 
its  alleged  funny  side." 

One  more  of  his  sayings:  At  the  unveiling 
of  a  bronze  tablet  to  Eugene  Field,  Mark 
uttered  these  words: 

xix 


"By  his  life  he  made  bright  the  lives  of  all 
who  knew  him  and  by  his  books  he  cheered 
the  thoughts  of  thousands  who  didn't  know 
him." 

Substitute  "millions"  for  thousands  and 
you  have  Mark  Twain  the  Man  and  Mark 
Twain  the  Writer. 


One  afternoon,  having  laughed  our  fill  with 
the  "Belle  of  New  York"  and  rejoiced  in  the 
London  success  of  the  piece  (Mark,  who 
while  alive  enjoyed  scant  luck  as  a  play 
wright,  yet  loved  to  see  others  "win  out"), 
our  friend  and  the  present  writer  happened 
to  cross  Bedford  Square.  Seeing  the  name 
at  a  street  corner,  Mark  pulled  out  his  note 
book.  "  Eugene  Field  lived  somewhere  around 
here  in  1889,"  he  said.  I  showed  him  the 
house,  No.  20  Alfred  Street. 

"A  dark  and  dismal  hole,"  said  Mark, 
ruefully  shaking  his  head;  "no  wonder  he 
couldn't  find  his  'righteous  stomach'  there, 
even  in  the  absence  of  Chicago  pies." 

"And  coffee,  "  I  interpolated.  "Yours  truly, 
too,  would  have  died  of  dyspepsia  if  he  had 
stayed  in  Chicago  and  continued  at  Henrici's 
coffee  and  pie  counter,  as  Gene  did.  " 

Mark  remained  silent  for  a  block  or  two. 
"I've  got  it,"  he  said  at  last,  "God  gave  Gene 
a  good  enough  stomach,  and  English  hospital 
ity  completely  paralyzed  what  was  left  of  his 
digestive  powers  after  the  Cook  County  coffee 

xx 


and  pie  diet.  Did  you  see  much  of  Gene 
while  he  was  in  London?" 

I  told  Mark  all  I  knew  about  Field's  social 
and  literary  doings.  "  Bennett  was  right  when 
he  refused  him  a  job  on  the  London  Herald/' 
said  Clemens.  "For  one  thing,  the  Herald 
didn't  last  long,  and  the  English  climate  would 
have  cut  poor  Gene's  life  still  shorter  by  two 
or  three  winters  and  falls." 

Just  the  same,  the  desire  for  a  London  suc 
cess,  then  common  among  American  writers 
and  artists,  killed  Eugene  Field,  the  genial 
and  lovable  poet  of  childhood  and  man-about- 
literature's-highways-and-byways. 

HENRY  W.  FISHER. 

In  the  last  days  of 
December,  1921. 


xxi 


ABROAD  WITH  MARK  TWAIN 


HOW  MARK  WOULD  SAFEGUARD 
ENGLAND.* 

"Not  on  your  life,"  said  Mark  Twain, 
in  pajamas  and  dressing  gown,  lolling  in  his 
big  armchair  at  Brown's  C*thc  only  subdued 
and  homelike  inn  left  in  London,"  he  used 
to  call  it)— -"  not  if  you  bring  the  Bath  Club 
(and  tub)  right  into  this  suite  so  I  don't  have 
to  shock  my  good  English  friends  by  paint 
ing  the  town  blue  skipping  across  Dover 
Street  in  my  dressing  gown.  By  the  way," 
he  added,  winking  an  eye  at  Bram  Stoker, 
"my  daughter  Clara  bought  me  this—  '  (he 
held  up  the  skirts  of  his  bathrobe  with 
both  hands)  "a  most  refined  girl!  If  she 
wasn't,  would  she  have  sent  me  a  wire  like 
this? 

"  'Much  worried  by  newspapers.  Remember 
proprieties. ' 

"And  what  did  you  answer?"  asked  Bram. 

"None  of  your  business!  You  are  getting 
as  fresh  as  a  reporter,"  snapped  Twain,  with 
mock  severity,  while  looking  at  me. 

In  the  meanwhile  I  consulted  my  notebook. 
"It's  sixteen  years  since  the  Kaiser — "  I  re 
opened  the  case — 

*London,  June  24th  or  25th,  1907,  a  few  days  after  the  famous 
Royal  Garden  Party  at  NVindsor,  where  Mark  had  been  lionized. 
Persons  present,  Mark  Twain  and  secretary,  Bram  Stoker,  and  author. 

25 


"Oh,  I  have  a  notebook  too.  Wait  a 
minute,"  interrupted  Twain.  He  gave  his 
secretary  directions,  and  presently  read  from 
an  old,  much  worn  diary,  sustaining  my 
date-line  as  it  were — 

"...  since  this  democratic  lamb  and  the 
Imperial  lion  laid  down  together,  a  little 
General  providing  grub — " 

"Sixteen  years  is  a  long  time,  and  if 
the  Kaiser  imposed  silence  upon  you  then 
and  there,  the  lid  is  certainly  off  now," 
I  insisted.  "Besides,  at  present,  he's  got 
Nietzsche  on  the  brain. " 

"I  don't  care  whether  Annie  Besant  and 
William  Jennings  Bryan  occupy  lofts  in  his 
upper  story,"  said  Twain.  "I  had  promised 
Von  Versen"  (the  General  and  Mark's  relation) 
"not  to  talk  about  that  jamboree,  and  the 
worms,  if  interested,  will  have  to  turn  burglars 
and  jimmy  my  brain  cells,  where  memories  of 
the  banquet  are  stored,  for  I  swear  I'll  leave 
no  skeleton  key. " 

"Pshaw!  You  are  still  sore  because  Willie 
wouldn't  let  you  get  in  a  word  edgewise," 
said  Stoker. 

"Man  alive!"  cried  Twain,  "his  talk  was 
selling  books  for  me.  I  was  in  rotten  bad 
shape  then  financially,  doing  syndicate  work 
for  The  Sun'  and  'McClureY.  Could  I  afford 
to  say,  'Can  your  talk,  Willie — like  poverty, 
they  have  you  with  them  always — but  I  am 
here  for  a  short  time  only — my  turn  to  stir  up 
the  animals." 

26 


We  agreed  that  if  an  emperor  climbs  the 
dizzy  heights  of  bookmongerdom  he  ought  to 
have  all  the  rope  he  wants. 

"And  did  you  like  the  British  better  than 
the  Berlin  brand  of  king?"  was  asked. 

"They  let  me  do  a  lot  of  talking  at  Wind 
sor,"  evaded  honest  Mark.  "I  like  these 
folks  immensely.  Ed  is  a  manly  fellow,  de 
spite  his  Hoboken  accent — no  wonder  he 
fought  with  his  ma,  who  wore  the  pants  while 
Albert  was  alive,  and  tried  to  impose  her 
German  policies  on  her  successor-to-be.  Ed 
recalled  an  indigestion  which  we  both  enter 
tained  at  Homburg,  at  the  Elizabeth  Spa 
there,  which  is  more  kinds  of  pure  salt  than 
Kissingen  even.  The  blonde  Fraulein  who  had 
sold  us  the  liquid  caviar  advised  walking  it 
off,  and  as  stomachache  inclines  to  democracy 
the  same  as  toothache,  I  didn't  mind  tramping 
with  Ed,  though  I  fancied  that  I  would  hear 
more  about  royal  inner  works  than  was  decent 
for  a  minister's  son. " 

"Did  you  tell  the  King  any  yarns?" 

"Well,  he  referred  to  my  giving  out  that 
interview  about  the  news  of  my  death  being 
greatly  exaggerated,  and  was  pleased  to  call 
it  funny.  When  I  said  that  everybody  more 
or  less  was  given  to  overstatement,  Ed  com 
mented,  dryly,  'Especially  my  nephew  of  Ger 
many.'  So  I  told  the  story  of  the  Russian  Jew 
who  claimed  to  have  been  chased  by  47  wolves. 

"  'You  probably  were  so  frightened  you 
saw  double,'  suggested  the  magistrate. 

27 


"  *  There  were  12  at  least/  insisted  Isaac. 
'Won't  half  a  dozen  do?' 

"  'As  I  live,  there  were  seven.' 

"  'Now  tell  the  truth,  Isaac.  There  was 
one  wolf — one  is  enough  to  frighten  a  little 
Israelite  like  you. ' 

"  Isaac,  glad  of  saving  one  out  of  47,  nodded. 

"  '  But  maybe  the  creature  wasn't  a  wolf  at 
all!' 

"  'No  wolf!'  cried  Isaac,  'what  else  could 
he  be?  Didn't  he  have  four  legs,  and  didn't 
he  wag  his  tail?' 

"After  that  Ed  turned  me  over  to  the 
Queen  and  a  tribe  of  Princes  and  Princesses, 
who  all  seemed  much  relieved  when  I  solemnly 
informed  them  that  I  had  no  intention  of  buy 
ing  Windsor  Castle  this  trip.  Then  we  talked 
commonplaces  until  Alexandra  commanded 
me  to  put  on  my  hat  lest  I  catch  cold,  which 
gave  me  a  chance  to  tell  about  Will  Penn. 
Penn,  you'll  remember,  insisted  on  wearing 
his  hat  everywhere.  When  he  saw  King 
Charles,  the  second  of  his  name,  doff  his 
chapeau  at  a  court  function,  the  future  Phila- 
delphian  inquired: 

"  'Friend  Charles,  why  dost  thou  take  off 
thy  lid?' 

"  'Because,'  answered  Charles,  'it  is  cus 
tomary  at  court  that  only  one  may  remain 
covered  in  the  King's  presence. ' 

"I  was  ashamed,  cracking  that  chestnut," 
said  Mark,  "but  Alexandra  and  the  youngsters 

28 


seemed  to  think  it  a  real  side-splitter  to  judge 
by  the  noise  they  made. " 

"Nice  people,"  said  Bram. 

"You  bet,"  spoke  Mark  emphatically, 
"and  that's  why  I'll  have  a  word  or  two  with 
the  War  Office  of  this  here  realm  before  I  quit. 
I  have  been  thinking,  you  know.  When  we 
got  through  with  the  grub  at  General  Versen's 
and  retired  to  the  smoking  room,  that  Kaiser, 
in  the  meantime  reinforced  by  a  lot  of  his 
officers  that  came  in  for  beer,  pretzels  and 
cigars — that  Kaiser  worked  himself  up  into  a 
fine  frenzy  about  his  U-boats.  His  Germania 
Shipyards  at  Kiel  (they  were  really  Krupps, 
but  he  was  the  principal  stockholder)  would 
turn  out  better  and  bigger  U-boats,  he 
said,  than  the  French  and  English  could  ever 
hope  to  build.  And  when  he  had  enough  of 
them,  with  all  the  improvements  science  and 
technique  could  provide — then  beware,  proud 
Albion ! 

"Invasion  was  the  least  he  threatened  un 
less  England  helped  him  exterminate  France. 
'It  was  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world/ 
boasted  William,  'a  hundred  U-boats  oper 
ating  against  England,  Scotland  and  Ireland 
simultaneously  could  pull  off  the  trick  in  a 
day  or  two. ' 

Mark  lit  a  fresh  cigar,  tilted  his  feet  as  high 
as  the  chiffonier  allowed  and  developed  what 
he  was  pleased  to  call  his  "strategy." 

"You  see,"  he  said,  "the  waters  'round 
these  islands  are  charted  to  the  last  half  pint. 

29 


The  British  Admiralty  knows  the  bottom  as 
well  as  the  surface  and  the  coast.    Now  sup- 

SDSC  Willie  or  any  other  divinely  Appointed 
ne  (I  don't  think,  though,  there  is  another 
as  foolish  and  reckless  as  he)  should  attempt 
to  carry  out  that  invasion  threat.  Mind,  its 
possibilities  are  not  denied  by  British  strate 
gists;  I  have  made  inquiries.  Now,  to  meet 
invasion  in  the  old  orthodox  way  would 
cost  a  million  lives,  a  thousand  millions  in 
treasure,  and,  after  all,  the  result  would  be 
problematical. 

"To  make  defeat  of  the  invasion  plans  cer 
tain,  we  must  forestall  execution.  And  the 
only  way  to  do  that  is  to  stew  those  U-boats 
in  their  own  electric  fat — juice,  I  mean.  See 
my  point?  " 

Bram  and  I  said  we  did,  "but — "  and 
Twain,  knowing  that  we  were  lying  like 
thieves,  explained: 

"In  time  of  peace,  et  cetera. ...  In  this  case 
(I  will  have  the  device  patented,  of  course)  we 
will  build  a  steel  fence  all  around  the  three 
kingdoms,  height  to  be  determined  by  local 
conditions.  In  all  cases  it  will  be  so  graduated 
as  to  allow  the  biggest  ocean  liner  to  pass  over, 
yet  high  enough  to  bar  the  biggest  and  the 
smallest  U-boat  pirate.  Are  you  on?"  asked 
Mark. 

Bram  said  he  was,  but  I  couldn't  tell  another 
lie  before  luncheon. 

"Well,   it's    this    way,   you    duffer,"    saicl 

30 


Mark,  "somewhere,  everywhere  on  the  Eng 
lish,  Scottish  and  Irish  coasts,  immense  dyna 
mos  will  be  established — these  with  no  fancy 
brushes,  mark  you — to  connect  with  certain 
points  of  my  steel  fence  by  naked  cables. 

"The  British  Admiralty  will  know,  of 
course,  when  the  U-boat  armada  sets  out,  and 
will  turn  on  the  current  when  and  where  it  will 
do  the  most  harm.  Now  the  moment  a  U-boat 
touches  my  fence,  out  of  business  it  goes,  goes 
for  good,  but  at  the  same  time  its  agony  will 
start.  For  my  fence  will  be  magnetized  as 
well  as  electrified,  and  though  the  U-boat  is 
momentarily  repulsed,  it  is  held,  at  the  same 
time,  captive  by  a  giant  magnet. 

"Think  of  the  fine  time  the  enemy  crew  will 
have,"  chuckled  Twain,  "with  ten  thousands 
of  volts  pumped  into  their  vessel  at  the  bottom 
of  the  sea,  the  magnet  preventing  its  getaway. 

"Boys,"  he  continued,  "I  would  like  to  sit 
on  top  of  Big  Ben"  (in  the  tower  of  Parlia 
ment  House,  London)  "and  direct  the  electric 
strokes  myself. " 

"And  this  epoch-making  invention  of  yours, 
will  you  present  it  to  Great  Britain  as  a  free 
gift?" 

"Not  I,"  said  Twain.  "I  have  a  family  to 
look  after.  I  intend  to  get  a  round  million 
sterling  from  the  War  Office  here.  And  if  the 
British  refuse  to  pay,  why,  when  you  come  to 
think  of  it,  we  have  quite  a  long  coast  line  in 
the  United  States—" 


While  Mark  was  speaking,  Sir  Thomas  Lip- 
ton  came  in  with  a  newspaper  poster,  four 
days  old,  that  read: 

MARK  TWAIN  ARRIVES 
ASCOT  CUP  STOLEN 

And  that  turned  the  conversation  into 
other  channels. 


MARK    PHILOSOPHIZED    ON    WILLIE 

Mark  had  attended  a  masked  ball  at  the 
Berlin  Palace  and  was  asked  what  he  thought 
of  William  Hohenzollern  dressed  up  as  Fred 
erick  the  Great.  "He  reminded  me  of  the 
little  speech  addressed  by  a  Cossack  Chief  to 
Orloff,  the  lover  of  Catherine  of  Russia. 
Orloff  visited  the  chief  wearing  a  French 
court  costume.  The  Cossack  began  to  laugh. 

"  'What  is  there  to  laugh  at?'  demanded 
Orloff  in  a  rage. 

"  '  I  laugh  because  you  shaved  your  face  to 
look  young  and  put  flour  in  your  hair  to  look 
old — both  things  at  the  same  time/  replied 
the  Barbarian. 

"As  to  William,  he  reminded  me  of  still 
another  thing;  namely,  the  thigh-bone  of  a 
Saint  I  was  introduced  to  in  Italy  and  which, 
they  said,  belonged  to  a  famous  preacher  of 
old.  I  turned  the  bone,  which  was  encased  in 
glass,  gold  and  precious  stones,  over  and  over, 
yet  could  get  no  notion  of  the  quality  of  its 
original  owner's  sermons. " 


33 


MARK— REGICIDE 

"  I  have  been  reading  up  on  the  laws  dealing 
with  regicide,"  I  heard  Mark  Twain  tell  Min 
ister  Phelps  one  morning  in  dead  seriousness, 
"and  do  you  know  what  they  are  going  to  do 
with  me?  Three  or  four  things. 

"First,  they  will  cut  my  right  hand  off,  and 
then  hit  me  on  the  mouth  with  it,  by  way  of 
reproof,  I  suppose.  Second,  they'll  hari-kari 
me  and  build  a  little  fire  to  do  my  insides 
brown — all  the  time  keeping  me  alive  for  the 
rest  of  the  show.  That  will  take  some  stimu 
lants,  I  reckon. 

"Third,  they'll  hang  me  by  the  neck  until  I 
am  stone  dead.  Whether  I  will  get  my  inards 
and  my  hand  back  before  they  send  me  to 
wormland,  I  don't  know. " 

"What  are  you  talking  about?"  queried 
Mr.  Phelps. 

"Why,  you  made  me  admit  yesterday  to 
Count  Seckendorff  that  the  judge  who  sent 
Charles  the  First  to  the  block  was  a  near  rela 
tive  of  mine.  Now,  as  soon  as  Willie  hears 
about  that,  he  will  have  my  hands,  my  inards 
or  anything  else  he  craves  of  my  anatomy. " 

Of  course,  everybody  roared,  and  Mr. 
Phelps  had  to  explain  that  at  dinner  the  night 
before,  one  of  the  guests,  the  nobleman  men 
tioned,  who  was  the  favorite  of  the  Empress 
Frederick,  had  boasted  a  lot  of  his  ancestry; 
grandfathers  and  uncles  of  his  had  been  pres 
ent  at  every  great  battle  the  world  over  and 

34 


had,  of  course,  always  fought  on  the  winning 
side.  Later,  when  the  company  was  looking 
at  some  engravings,  Mr.  Phelps,  in  a  joke, 
pointed  to  the  figure  of  a  Puritan,  saying,  with 
a  merry  twinkle  in  his  eye: 

"Ancestor  of  mine. " 

The  picture  happened  to  illustrate  the  trial 
of  Charles  the  First  of  England.  Now,  not  to 
be  outdone,  Twain  pointed  to  the  Lord  Judge 
on  the  woolsack,  and  matched  Phelps'  lie. 

11  My  ancestor,  if  you  please."  He  made 
the  statement  at  the  very  moment  when 
Count  Seckendorff  looked  at  the  picture. 
Hence,  Mark's  awful  apprehensions. 

"Regicide,"  he  told  us,  "is  never  outlawed 
by  the  lapse  of  time.  When  Charles  the 
First's  son  was  restored  to  the  throne,  hun 
dreds  of  dead  regicides  were  pulled  out  of  their 
graves  by  the  ears  and  hanged  and  quartered. 
As  to  the  living,  they  were  treated  as  I  de 
scribed,  and  I  am  afraid  that  if  Seckendorff 
reports  me  (Willie  being  half  English)  I  will 
be  punished  just  as  if  I  had  made  Charles  a 
head  shorter  myself,  yesterday  afternoon. " 


THE  FUNNIEST  SPEECH  MARK  EVER 
HEARD 

"The  funniest  thing  I  ever  heard  was 
chirped  right  here  in  this  neighborhood/'  said 
Mark  Twain,  snuggling  down  in  his  big  arm 
chair  before  the  fire,  which  wasn't  blazing,  and 
"didn't  mean  to — without  kerosene"  (he  told 
the  maid,  warning  her  not  to  let  the  "Missus" 
know). 

The  "neighborhood"  was  Tedworth  Square, 
London,  "quite  the  other  side  of  Mayfair," 
and  leading  to  some  queer  streetlets  and  lanes. 

"London's  Fifth  Avenues,"  mused  Mark, 
"remind  me  of  a  sable  coat  (such  as  Pauline 
Bonaparte  used  to  wear)  edged  with  cat-skin: 
There  are  always  Hell-kitchens  within  hailing 
distance. 

"Well,  at  that  time  my  girls  had  a  friend 
living  in  Clapham,  and  nightly  she  walked  me 
ten  or  more  blocks  to  her  bus  through  one  of 
those  Hell-kitchens  lined  with  fried-fish  shops 
and  other  ill-smelling  emporiums  for  acquisi- 
tioning  lucre. " 

He  turned  to  an  English  friend: 

"Maybe  'lined'  isn't  correct,  for  the  fish 
shops  were  all  on  one  side  of  the  lane,  and 
naturally  I  ambled  along  the  other.  I  thought 
I  was  safe  there,  but  of  course  I  wasn't,  for  the 
smells  zigzagged  across  the  pavement  and 
followed  me  like  a  rotten  conscience.  My 
haven  of  safety,  or  comparative  safety,  from 
the  rancid  oil  compost  was  an  undertaker's 

36 


shop  at  the  lane's  extreme  end.  When  I  got 
there,  I  used  to  hoist  up  my  coat-tails  and 
skip  across  the  street  right  into  the  Public 
'Ouse  opposite  for  a  Scotch.  Naturally  I  took 
more  or  less  interest  in  that  cemetery-corre 
spondence  school.  From  a  notice  posted,  I 
learned  that  it  was  under  'new  management' 
—I  call  that  an  ingenious  appeal  for  corpses, 
don't  you? 

"Well,  it  wasn't  merely  an  office,  the  car 
pentry  was  right  at  the  tail  of  the  roll  topper; 
there,  night  after  night,  an  old,  sad-faced  man 
sat,  looking  for  customers.  Now,  the  English 
metropolis  is  reputed  the  healthiest  city  in  the 
world,  which  proves  that  the  legend  about 
cleanliness  being  nearest  to  godliness  is  bloom 
ing  rot,  for  London  is  ten  times  dirtier  than 
Berlin,  seven  and  a  half  times  dirtier  than 
New  York  and  six  times  dirtier  than  the  best 
parts  of  Paris.  Anyhow,  that  man-hyena, 
hungry  for  worm-food,  didn't  enjoy  the  low 
rate  of  mortality  one  single  bit.  I  could  see 
that  every  time  I  eyed  him,  and  I  lamped  him 
regularly  before  I  waltzed  into  the  gin-mill  to 
drown  the  fried-fish  smell. " 

"And  did  one  Scotch  suffice  for  the  opera 
tion?"  asked  Mr.  Bell. 

Mark  looked  at  Mrs.  Clemens  and  lied 
brazenly:  "Yes,  of  course."  But  as  she  had 
risen  to  go  out  and  was  walking  toward  the 
door,  he  added  in  an  undertone:  "One  Scotch 
was  like  taking  a  bottle  of  perfume  from  the 
ten-cent  store  into  a  glue  factory  to  paralyze 

37 


the  Cologne  smell  of  a  four-acre  establishment 
of  that  sort. " 

"To  resume/'  resumed  Mark,  "seeing  each 
other  nightly  for  a  week  or  a  week  and  a  half, 
that  undertaker  chap  and  this  here  yellow 
journalist  of  literature  got  on  famously,  and 
our  acquaintance,  though  by  eyesight  only, 
gradually  blossomed  into  real  brotherhood. 
Whenever  I  clapped  eyes  on  the  poor  devil, 
I  used  to  think:  'I  do  wish  some  one  would 
have  the  heart  to  die.  Why  don't  the  Gloomy 
Dean  or  His  Grace  of  Canterbury  oblige  the 
poor  shark  ? ' 

"And  no  doubt,  observing  my  gray  locks 
and  general  decrepitude,  he  calculated:  'Time 
for  him  to  kick  the  bucket — hope  his  wife  will 
give  me  a  chance  to  measure  him  for  a  ten- 
guinea  wooden  coat — yes,  he  looks  good  for 
ten  guineas. ' 

"Anyhow,"  said  Mark,  "I  felt  in  my  heart 
of  hearts  that  I  was  worth  more  dead  than 
alive  to  this  person — rotten  grammar,  I  know, 
but  don't  let  that  muss  up  your  tempers, 
gents — and  while  the  idea  of  suicide  was  re 
pugnant  (I  was  making  big  money  then,  that 
is,  I  expected  to  rake  in  $100.00  or  more  next 
week)  still  I  cudgeled  my  brain  for  ways  and 
means  to  improve  his  business.  It's  easy 
enough  to  promote  a  grocer's  or  butcher's 
trade;  all  you  have  to  do  is  to  get  rid  of  your 
sour  stomach  at  some  Appetite  Cure  Factory, 
and  pitch  in  anew  with  dill  pickles  and  strong 
coffee  and  frankfurters  and  sweetbreads  and 

38 


deep-dish  pies.  But  an  undertaker's!  Really, 
I  had  no  desire  to  pose  for  Madame  Tous- 
saud's  dead-uns.  At  the  same  time,  no  dog 
gone  friend  of  mine  would  die,  giving  me  the 
chance  to  bury  him  at  my  expense.  Running 
away  from  that  fried-fish  smell,  I  always  felt 
like  Henry  the  Eighth,  when  one  of  his  half- 
dozen  queens  wouldn't  be  introduced  to  the 
axe-man.  Indeed,  if  that  starving  undertaker 
had  been  my  own  best  enemy,  I  couldn't  have 
felt  more  sorry  for  him.  But  lo!  —  the  silver 
lining  to  the  cloud!  One  evening,  as  I  ap 
proached  the  carcassery,  my  startled  ears 
were  assailed  by  that  quaint  ditty: 

For  we  are  the  drunkenest  lot 
Of  the  drunken  Irish  crew — 

and,  leaping  forward  like  oiled  lightning,  I  saw 
the  undertaker  at  work  in  the  rear  of  the  shop. 

"  'Bless  me,  if  the  ban  isn't  broke,'  I 
thought,  'and  with  this  dent  in  the  armor, 
Fate  will  waltz  up  plenty  more  diseased  ones. 
It's  always  thus. ' 

"Suiting  my  action  to  the  classic  monologue 
— 'thus'  is  a  beautiful  word,  isn't  it? — I 
peered  through  the  side  window,  expecting  the 
janitor  of  tenements-of-clay  to  be  at  work  on 
a  nine-foot  coffin  or  thereabout — " 

All  the  merriment  fled  from  Mark  Twain's 
face  and  manner  when  he  added:  "Damme, 
if  that  God-forsaken  corpse-slinger  was  not 
planing  a  baby  coffin! 

"That  night  I  took  three  Scotch,  and" 
(looking  around)  "  I  don't  care  if  Livy  knows. " 

39 


"I  thought  you  were  going  to  tell  ?ijunny 
one/'  said  one  of  us,  after  a  while.  Clemens 
had  got  rid  of  his  emotion  by  that  time.  "  Cor 
rect,"  he  drawled,  "It  happened  a  few  days 
later,  when  I  was  working  the  fried-fish  side  of 
the  lane.  The  street  was  quite  deserted  on 
account  of  the  lateness  of  the  hour  and  owing 
to  the  burial  of  herrings  and  crab-meat  in 
innumerable  stomachs,  big  and  little.  As  I 
put  on  extra  steam  to  reach  the  gin-mill  before 
closing  time,  this  pretty  legend  wafted  across 
the  moonbeams: 

'I  say,  my  little  female  doggie*  (as  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  shorter  and  uglier  word 
was  used,  but  it  isn't  good  form,  though  one 
may  mention  'bull  pups'  at  Mrs.  Van  Astor- 
bilt's  tea)  'I  say,  my  little  female  doggie,  tell 
Mother  if  she  has  another  litter  by  that 
crossing  sweeper  of  hers,  to  take  care  to 
drown  'em  before  they  grow  up  as  big  as 
you.' 

"The  lady  speaking,  or  rather  shrieking, 
repeated  this  admonition  three  or  four  times, 
and  followed  it  up  with  a  succession  of  oaths 
that  I  frankly  envied  her.  Yes,  indeed,  her 
'female  doggie,'  her  'crossing  sweeper,'  her 
'litter,'  and  her  brand  of  blasphemy  filled  me 
with  obscene  delight,  and  I  chuckled  over 
them  for  a  week. " 

After  the  laughter  had  subsided,  Richard 
Harding  Davis  asked:  "And  what  is  a  cross 
ing  sweeper,  pray?" 

40 


"A  compound  of  rags  and  dirt,  fitted  with  a 
face  and  feet  and  a  broom,  who  mops  up  the 
dirty  pavement  to  save  your  spats,  and  curses 
you  for  a  curmudgeon  if  you  give  him  less 
than  a  ha'penny  for  his  trouble. " 


0 

MONARCHICAL  ATAVISM 

One  day  in  Berlin,  speaking  of  General 
Grant,  Mark  said,  "I  did  not  admire  him  so 
much  for  winning  the  war  as  for  ending  the 
war.  Peace — happiness— brotherhood — that 
is  what  we  want  in  this  world. " 

"Here  comes  the  Kaiser,"  he  continued, 
"and  sends  me  tickets  for  his  September  re 
view.  Of  course  I  will  go.  But  I  don't  care 
for  military  spectacles,  or  for  militarism. 
Tolstoy  was  right  in  calling  army  life  '  a  school 
for  murder.'  In  Germany  to-day  there  are 
ten  million  men  drilled  to  look  upon  the  Kaiser 
as  a  god.  And  if  the  Kaiser  says  '  kill ' — they 
kill.  And  if  he  says  '  die  for  me ' — they  go  out 
and  get  themselves  shot.  The  blame  and 
shame  rest  with  the  big  and  little  war  lords. 
As  to  the  German  people,  mere  subjects,  they 
have  eighteen  or  twenty  centuries  of  monar 
chical  atavism  in  their  blood. " 


DEMOCRATIC  MARK  AND  THE 
AUSTRIAN  ARISTOCRACY 

Mark  Twain  was  essentially  a  democrat, 
and  the  nobles  he  met  in  Berlin  and  other 
parts  of  Germany  never  cured  him  of  that  fine 
habit.  But  in  Vienna  he  grew  less  exclusive 
and  in  the  end  actually  liked  to  mix  with  high 
aristocrats.  "The  Prussian  noble/'  he  once 
explained  at  the  Metropole,  "walks  and  acts 
as  if  he  had  swallowed  the  stick  they  used  to 
beat  him  with  when  a  youngster — I  stole  the 
simile  somewhere,  but  never  mind — however, 
the  Vienna  brand  of  aristocrat  is  different. 
Maybe  Austrian  nobles  are  just  as  stuck-up 
on  account  of  their  ancestry,  but  they  have  the 
good  sense  not  to  let  their  pride  be  seen.  They 
all  treat.me  cordially,  talk  agreeably  and  seem 
to  possess  at  least  a  stock  of  superficial  infor 
mation.  The  Princess  Pauline  Metternich,  in 
particular,  is  a  bully  old  girl.  If  she  were  to 
write  her  memoirs,  the  world  would  gain  a 
book  as  bright  as  Mme.  de  Sevigne's  Letters. 
For  one  thing  I  would  like  to  have  seen  her 
husband's  face  when  he  learned  that  she  made 
him  sign  his  own  death  warrant. 

"Prince  Metternich,  as  Austrian  ambassa 
dor  in  Paris,  used  to  sign  any  and  every  paper 
his  secretaries  put  before  him,  as  he  was  much 
too  indolent  to  read  them.  To  cure  him  of 
this  habit,  Pauline  one  fine  day  laid  a  docu 
ment  on  his  desk,  ordering  that  he,  the  Prince, 
be  taken  out  and  shot  at  sunrise.  Metternich 

43 


promptly  put  his  name  to  it  without  reading 
a  line.  Next  morning  at  five,  several  male 
friends  of  His  Highness  rang  the  bell  at  the 
Palace  and  demanded  to  be  taken  up  to  the 
bedroom.  They  wore  Austrian  uniforms  and 
made  an  awful  racket  with  their  swords. 
Metternich  stormed  from  his  bed  to  see  what 
the  row  was  and  then  and  there  the  death 
warrant  was  read  to  him.  He  fainted.  Indeed 
they  had  a  big  time  snatching  him  from  the 
brink  of  the  grave,  for  he  was  near  frightened 
to  death. 

"Some  jocular  wife,  eh?"  chuckled  Mark. 


44 


PHIL  SHERIDAN'S  FRIEND 

"Jenny  Stubel,"  mused  Mark  over  the 
"Berliner  Tageblatt"  at  the  Cafe  Bauer, 
"Jenny  Stu — ,  there  is  a  yarn  about  that  girl 
in  the  back  of  my  head,  but  what  it  is  I  cannot 
for  the  life  of  me  make  out. " 

"What  has  she  done  now?"  I  queried. 
"Marriage  or  divorce,  set  a  theatre  afire,  or 
made  away  with  one  of  those  stupid  arch 
dukes  flourishing  in  Vienna?" 

"Half-correct,"  said  Twain,  "an  archduke 
abducted  Jenny.  But  how  did  you  come  so 
near  guessing  it?" 

"  I  was  Jenny's  manager  in  the  early  eighties 
when  she  and  her  sister  Lori  headed  the  Vienna 
operetta  company.  In  fact,  I  introduced  her 
to  Grover  Cleveland — " 

"And  Phil  Sheridan?"  demanded  Twain. 

"Sheridan,  Joaquin  Miller,  Henry  Watter- 
son  and  the  rest." 

"We'll  get  this  story  pat  first,"  said  Mark, 
shoving  the  paper  over  to  me.  "Chances  are 
I  have  it  upside  down.  Let  me  have  the  facts 
and  keep  the  trimmings  for  some  other  day." 

The  "facts"  told  the  now  well-nigh  forgot 
ten  story  that  (some  time  in  October,  1891) 
the  archduke  John  Salvator  of  Austria  had 
renounced  his  title  and  dignities,  had  assumed 
the  name  of  John  Orth,  bought  a  four-masted 
schooner  and,  as  her  captain,  went  sailing  the 
Atlantic  and  Pacific  in  company  with  Jenny 
Stubel,  the  operetta  star. 

45 


"  'Tall,  yellow-haired,  lots  of  quicksilver 
in  her  system/  that's  how  Sheridan  sized  up 
Jenny.  Right,  you  say?  Well,  then,  her  arch 
duke  wasn't  so  very  foolish,  after  all,  particu 
larly  as  she  was  a  sweet  singer,  a  nimble  dancer 
and  all  that.  Did  you  say  you  introduced  her 
to  Grover  Cleveland?" 

"Sure,  at  one  of  the  public  afternoon  recep 
tions,  when  everybody  went  to  shake  hands 
with  the  President." 

"General  Sheridan  was  quite  taken  with 
Jenny,"  continued  Twain.  "He  told  me  he 
went  to  the  show  night  after  night  and  didn't 
care  how  much  he  applauded  her  young  beauty 
and  fascinating  voice.  Yes,  Phil  was  really 
smitten  with  Jenny.  And  now  the  admired  of 
the  most  famous  General  of  Horse  defies  the 
world  to  become  an  acknowledged  royal  mis 
tress,  and  her  sprig  of  royalty  the  black  sheep 
of  a  crowned  family  by  no  means  lily-white  at 
that.  She  reminds  me  of  old  Field  Marshal 
Prince  de  Ligne,  making  love  to  a  very  young 
girl  and  succeeding,  or  nearly  succeeding, 
before  he  had  time  to  reflect. 

'A    million/    cried   the  Field   Marshal, 
'if  I  was  a  lieutenant  now/  ' 


"ELIZABETH  WAS  A  HE,"  SAID  MARK 

"Mark  my  word,  Elizabeth  was  a  he,"  said 
Clemens,  when  I  was  starting  for  London  the 
end  of  June,  1894,  leaving  the  Clemenses  at 
the  Normandie,  Paris,  "and  when  you  have  a 
little  time  in  England,  I  wish  you  would  look 
up  all  that  pesky  question  for  me. " 

"Not  in  Westminster  Abbey?"  I  cried  in 
alarm. 

"Now,  don't  you  try  to  be  gay,"  said  Mark. 
"It's  bad  enough  if /got  that  reputation  when 
I  want  to  be  taken  seriously.  I  know  they 
haven't  got  through  ascertaining  for  the 
'teenth  time  whether  Charles  I  really  lost  his 
head  when  his  overbearing  noddle  dropped 
into  the  basket  on  the  scaffold  opposite  the 
Horse-Guards — you  showed  me  the  spot  your 
self.  I  don't  want  any  ghoulish  work  done. 
Just  go  to  the  British  Museum  and  every 
other  library  and  nose  up  everything  apper 
taining  to  Queen  Elizabeth's  manly  character. 
You  get  the  authorities  (for  a  consideration,  of 
course)  and  I'll  do  the  rest.  Then  you  go 
down  Surrey-way  and  find  a  place  or  castle  or 
summer  house  called  Overcourt,  or  something. 
That's  where  Elizabeth  lived  in  her  teens,  and 
metamorphosed  into  a  boy. " 

"But  the  editor  will  never  allow  you  to 
write  on  such  a  subject.  Better  let  me  do  it. " 

"Not  on  your  life,"  said  Mark.  "It's  my 
discovery,  and  I'm  paying  you  for  the  work 
you  do,  just  as  the  New  York  'World'  and  the 

47 


'Sun'  do.  When  you  come  down  to  hard 
tacks  you  will  find  that  there  are  no  question 
able  proceedings  whatever,  just  an  exchange 
of  babies,  as  in  the  old-time  operas.  Trouba 
dour  and  the  rest.  The  Editor  will  have  no 
kick  coming. " 

"The  Editor/'  of  course,  was  Mrs.  Clemens, 
who  as  a  rule  censored  Mark's  manuscript— 
"tooth-combed  it,"  as  he  called  it,  cutting  out 
such  gems  as  "  the  affairs  of  the  Cat  who  had  a 
family  in  every  Port. " 

Mark  told  me  that  when  he  got  through 
with  "Joan  of  Arc"  he  would  tackle  "this 
here  Elizabeth  proposition" — "a  person  full 
of  placid  egotism  and  obsessed  with  self-im- 

Eortance,"  he  called  her.  "If  I  do  Elizabeth 
alf  as  well  as  I  intend  to  do  'Joan'  and  did 
'The  Prince  and  Pauper,'  I  will  have  three 
serious  books  to  my  credit,  and  after  that  I 
will  be  damned — 'thrice  damned,'  Elizabeth 
would  have  said — if  I  allow  anybody  to  take 
me  for  a  mere  funmaker. " 

He  gave  me  some  more  instructions,  talking 
at  random  mostly,  and  paid  me  in  advance  for 
the  work  I  was  to  do.  Twenty- four  hours 
later  I  landed  at  Victoria  Station,  London, 
for,  having  business  in  Antwerp,  I  had  trav 
elled  via  Holland. 

A  foreign  correspondent  (that  was  my  trade 
then)  is  shifted  merrily  from  one  place  to 
another;  so  it  happened  that  I  went  back  to 
France  after  a  fortnight  in  England,  or  even 

48 


sooner.  The  Clemenses  were  packing,  and  I 
had  Mark  all  to  myself  for  an  hour  or  so. 

"What  made  you  first  doubt  the  Virgin 
Queen's  sex?"  I  asked. 

"Never  mind — her  gorgeous  swearing  may 
be.  What  did  you  find  out  in  Surrey?" 

I  duly  reported  that  I  had  gone  to  Over- 
court  with  a  friend,  had  explored  the  Queen 
Elizabeth  chambers,  the  woods  and  country 
side,  and  had  interviewed  a  lot  of  old  and  some 
young  gossips,  with  this  result: 

Elizabeth,  I  was  told,  came  to  Overcourt 
when  a  child  of  four  or  five,  and  a  young  per 
son  supposed  to  be  Elizabeth — that  is,  the 
daughter  of  Ann  Boleyn  and  Henry  the 
Eighth — left  there  some  ten  years  later.  When 
the  Princess  was  seven  or  eight,  King  Henry, 
who  was  attending  Parliament,  had  promised 
to  come  and  see  his  little  girl  two  weeks  hence 
(Overcourt  is  within  easy  riding  distance  of 
London).  But  even  as  they  were  preparing  to 
give  Hal — ("Ought  to  b'e  Hell,"  interpolated 
Mark) — a  rousing  reception;  to  feed  the  brute 
in  particular,  Elizabeth  was  suddenly  attacked 
by  malignant  fever  and  died.  There  was  only 
one  "in  the  know,"  her  Grace's  governess — 
I  gave  her  name  to  Mark,  but  have  quite  for 
gotten  it.  I  remember,  though,  that  she  re 
mained  in  the  royal  service  for  some  forty 
years  afterwards,  in  fact,  that  she  and  "Eliza 
beth"  never  separated  while  both  lived. 

"I  can  imagine  how  that  poor  woman  felt," 
commented  Mark — "went  through  all  the 

49 


horrors  of  having  her  hair  bobbed  behind,  and 
her  neck  shaved — what  else  was  there  in  store 
for  her  but  a  beheading  party  if  Hal  found  his 
daughter  dead?  And  when,  in  your  mind's 
eye,  you  see  the  executioner  try  the  edge  of  his 
axe  on  his  thumb  nail,  life's  delicatessen — 
considerations  for  truth,  politics,  and  common 
everyday  decency — lose  their  appeal.  The 
axe-man  was  coming  and  that  governess  didn't 
want  to  be  the  chicken. " 

"That's  what  the  gossips  told  me,  and  they 
had  it  from  their  great-great-great-grand 
mothers,  a  blessed  heritage. " 

"Goon,"  said  Mark. 

"Well,  that  governess  knew  that  her  life 
depended  upon  finding  a  substitute  for  Eliza 
beth,  and  the  substitute  couldn't  materialize 
quickly  enough.  Briefly,  it  did  materialize  in 
the  person  of  the  late  Princess'  boy  playmate — 
here  are  his  name  and  affiliations,  as  Over- 
court  neighborhood  has  it. " 

"Fine,"  said  Mark,  "the  rest  I  know  or  can 
imagine.  She  dressed  up  that  kid  in  Eliza 
beth's  petticoats  and  togs  and  frightened  the 
life  out  of  him  not  to  betray  her  or  himself 
with  the  King  or  any  one  else. " 

"Quite  right,"  mused  Mark,  "for  the  eighth 
Henry  was  an  ogre — the  very  unborn  children 
of  England  knew  it.  Besides,  reading  up  the 
official  history  of  Elizabeth,  I  find  that  Hal 
hadn't  seen  his  daughter  for  three  or  four 
years  previous  to  his  visit  in  Overcourt.  The 

50 


deception,    then,    worked  easily  enough.      / 
could  have  done  it  at  a  pinch. " 

Mark  next  went  into  the  life  history  of  the 
great  Queen,  or  supposed  Queen.  "She  was 
a  male  character  all  over — a  thousand  acts  of 
hers  prove  it,"  he  insisted.  "Now  tell  me 
what  were  the  conspicuous  Tudor  traits — " 

" But  you  said  she  wasn't  a  Tudor,"  I  inter 
rupted. 

"Precisely,  but  she  had  to  copy  the  Tudors 
as  our  stage  impersonators  imitate  Bernhardt 
and  Henry  Dixie.  Now  what  were  those 
Tudor  traits:  remorselessness,  cunning,  lying 
till  the  cows  come  home,  murder,  robbery, 
despoliation!  All  of  them  Elizabeth,  or  the 
man  who  impersonated  the  Queen,  practiced 
to  the  dotlet  on  the  /'.  Think  of  the  letters  she 
wrote  to  Francis  Drake,  the  inventor  of  fried 
potatoes,  and  to  the  second  Philip  of  Spain. 
Wasn't  that  a  man's  game?  Could  woman  ever 

fet  up  anything  so  misleading  and  contra- 
and? 

"And  the  way  she  fooled  her  English,  Span 
ish,  Austrian,  German  and  French  admirers, 
setting  each  against  the  other,  never  neglect 
ing  to  threaten  Spain's  flank,  and,  at  the  last, 
throwing  them  the  head  of  Mary  of  Scots  as 
a  gage  of  battle  —  regular  male  strumpet's 
chicanery,  I  tell  you. " 

From  a  drawer  Mark  pulled  a  highly  deco 
rated  volume,  and  turned  the  leaves  quickly. 
"Elizabeth's  official  lovers,"  he  explained. 

51 


"Lord  Seymour,  second  husband  of  her  step 
mother,  Queen  Catherine  Parr.  Catherine, 
I  gather,  was  in  the  secret;  otherwise  she 
wouldn't  have  allowed  Seymour  to  carry  on 
with '  Elizabeth '  as  he  did.  And  he  had  about  a 
yard  of  whiskers  on  his  face  at  that.  There 
was  Leicester,  this  big  chap  here  with  the 
goatee.  She  had  him  beheaded,  not  because 
he  knew  anything  against  her,  or  about  her 
real  sex,  but  because  he  had  the  reputation  of 
knowing  things.  The  Virgin  Queen  made  her 
alleged  lover  a  head  shorter,  just  to  show  that 
she  didn't  care  what  she  did.  Henry  and 
Francis,  the  French  Valois  brothers,  Dukes  of 
something  or  other,  were  likewise  large,  sinis 
ter  looking  fellows.  These,  too,  she  used,  man 
fashion,  like  boobs,  and  as  no  other  crowned 
harridan  ever  used  a  lover.  Think  of  Catha 
rine  (of  Russia)  and  of  Josephine  and  Marie 
Louise — to  be  loved  by  those  ladies  was  real 
fun,  a  treat. "  Mark  lowered  his  voice  to  add: 
"I  read  somewhere  that  Catharine  allowed  the 
brothers  OrlofF  no  less  than  fifty  thousand 
roubles  pajama  money — fifty  thousand!  One 
can  buy  a  powerful  lot  of  nighties  for  that  much 
money,  even  at  the  Louvre,  across  the  way. " 

"There's  the  Britannica,"  continued  Mark, 
jumping  up.  He  found  a  paragraph  under  the 
caption  of  "Elizabeth"  that  tickled  him  im 
mensely.  "Read  this,  and  call  me  a  liar  if 
you  dare. " 

The  paragraph  states  that  there  was  "some 
physical  defect"  in  Elizabeth's  make-up,  that 


she  was  "masculine  in  mind  and  tempera 
ment/'  likewise,  that  no  man  ever  lost  his 
head  over  her  as  they  did  over  Mary  of  Scots. 
'NufFsaid  on  the  score  of  love-making  and 
lying,"  concluded  Mark.  'Nuff  for  the 
present,  I  mean;  but  here  is  another  thing. 
We  all  know  there  is  only  one  Hetty  Green, 
that  there  never  was  another.  Yet  this  here 
Elizabeth,  so  called — /'.  e.>  the  man  who  imper 
sonated  her — was  as  clever  a  financier  as  John 
D.  Rockefeller.  As  John  D.  gobbled  up  all  the 
oil  in  creation,  or  out  of  it,  so  Elizabeth,  so 
called,  lapped  up  all  the  gold,  minted  and 
otherwise.  Up  to  the  sixties  and  seventies  (of 
the  sixteenth  century)  Spain  had  an  absolute 
monopoly  of  the  yellow  and  white  metals,  you 
know.  When  the  person  called  Elizabeth  died, 
all  the  gold  of  the  world  was  in  English  hands, 
and,  besides,  England  dominated  all  the  ocean 
trade  routes,  where  formerly  the  Spanish  flag 
had  been  unchallenged. " 

"  As  circumstantial  evidence,  can't  be  beat," 
I  suggested  timidly,  "but — " 

'You  remind  me  of  the  cat  that  bolted  a 
whole  box  of  Seidlitz  powders  and  then  had 
no  more  judgment  than  to  lie  under  the  open 
hydrant,"  exploded  Mark.  "Why  don't  you 
ask  me  to  trot  out  Elizabeth  in  an  Andy 
Carnegie  Highland  costume,  kilts  and  all? 
There  will  be  missing  links,  plenty  of  them, 
after  all  these  years,  that  goes  without  saying, 
but  it's  a  great  story,  nevertheless.  Needs  a 

53 


hunk  of  brain,  though,  to  puzzle  it  out  to  its 
logical  conclusion." 

Soon  after  this  conversation,  the  Clemenses 
went  to  Italy,  and  for  some  little  time  I  ex 
pected  to  hear  from  Mark  further  on  the 
Elizabeth  legend.  But  the  yarn  seems  to  have 
slipped  his  memory,  and  as  I  found  him  en 
grossed  in  matters  of  the  moment,  I  didn't  try 
to  revive  his  interest  in  one  so  remote. 

But  I  have  often  wondered  whether,  or  not, 
his  many  unpublished  writings  show  that  he 
brought  "his  hunk  of  brains "  to  work  on 
unsexing  Elizabeth. 


54 


MARK— THE  SLEIGHT-OF-HAND  MAN 

Minister  William  Walter  Phelps  gave  a 
dinner  to  the  Clemenses  in  Frankfort,  when 
Mark  Twain  and  Livy  were  staying  at  a  near 
by  watering  place,  but  Mrs.  Clemens  was  not 
well  enough  to  attend — or,  as  Mark  whispered 
to  Mr.  Phelps — was  unwilling  to  go,  being 
afraid  that  he  might  disgrace  the  family  by 
some  practical  joke.  So  Mark  had  it  all  his 
own  way  and  enjoyed  his  freedom  hugely, 
keeping  all  in  a  roar. 

Finally,  Dr.  Von  Something-or-Other  tried 
to  get  in  a  word  edgewise  and  abruptly  asked 
Mark  what  he  thought  of  the  European  equi 
librium. 

(Mark  said  afterwards:  "Knowing  my 
political  incompetence,  the  Doctor  probably 
tried  to  inveigle  me  into  making  an  ass  of 
myself.") 

The  Herr  Von's  question  having  been  deliv 
ered  in  no  sotto  voce  style,  everybody  pricked 
up  ears  to  hear  Mark's  answer. 

"I  can't  explain  in  a  few  words,"  he  said, 
"but  I'll  demonstrate."  And  turning  to  Mr. 
Phelps:  "Hand  me  the  Doctor's  plate,  please. " 

The  Doctor  looked  up  "disgusted,"  be 
cause  he  had  only  just  commenced  to  eat  and 
was  "as  hungry  as  a  dog."  Plate  in  hand, 
Mark  stepped  to  a  space  between  the  window 
and  the  table  and  asked  the  Doctor  to  join 
him,  bringing  his  knife.  "Now,"  he  said,  "I 
will  throw  the  plate  up  to  the  ceiling  and  you 

55 


will  catch  it,  on  the  end  of  your  knife,  but 
don't  you  spill  anything.  After  catching  it,  you 
will  please  keep  it  spinning  upon  the  end  of 
your  steel  for  five  minutes,  balancing  it  so  as 
not  to  lose  a  drop  of  sauce,  a  chop,  or  fried 
murphy.  And  when  you  have  performed  all 
these  stunts  without  mishap,  you  will  have 
gained  a  correct  idea  of  what  I  think  of  the 
balance  of  European  power. " 


MARK  AND  THE  IMPERIAL  MISTRESS 

At  Vienna,  in  the  late  nineties,  Clemens  one 
fine  day  intoxicated  himself  with  the  idea  that 
there  would  be  millions  in  writing  a  play  with 
Kathi  Schratt,  Emperor  Francis  Joseph's 
acknowledged  mistress,  as  heroine.  He  had 
in  mind  a  collaborator  among  native  play 
wrights,  and  the  piece  was  to  be  translated 
into  all  living  tongues.  Mark  actually  started 
on  the  thing,  adding  to  his  knowledge  of  Ger 
man  as  he  went  along.  Matters  having  gone 
so  far,  I  persuaded  him  to  go  and  see  Frau 
Schratt  for  local  color. 

"Bully/*  he  said.  "But  you  must  come 
along.  I  would  never  trust  myself  alone  with 
a  royal  mistress,  not  I." 

Well,  we  went,  saw,  and — wondered  at 
Francis  Joseph's  taste.  In  speech  and  manner, 
though,  the  Schratt  was  a  fine  old  girl.  Showed 
us  a  big  houseful  of  presents,  all  gifts  from  his 
Majesty,  and  elaborately  so  marked. 

We  had  duly  admired  the  silver  bed,  the 
silver  folding  stool  and  the  ditto  cabinet, 
likewise  other  chamber  paraphernalia  of  white 
metal,  when  the  Schratt  said:  "There  is  one 
thing  more  the  like  of  which  you  haven't  in 
America." 

"You  don't  say  so!"  ejaculated  Mark,  in 
blasphemous  German. 

The  Schratt  pushed  a  button,  a  wall  panel 
shot  sideways,  and  the  handsomest  silver-gilt 

57 


bathtub  ever  came  waltzing  in,  or  rather 
roller-skated  in. 

In  our  homeward  bound  fiacre,  Mark  re 
mained  silent  for  fully  ten  minutes;  then  he 
delivered  himself  sadly  but  firmly: 

"No,  it's  all  off  with  that  mellerdrammer. 
For  if  I  let  Schratt  ride  down  to  the  footlights 
in  that  golden  tub,  people  will  want  to  see  the 
Empress  in  it,  too;  next  they  will  holler  for 
Kaiser  Bill,  Sarah  Bernhardt,  Loie  Fuller,  and 
William  Jennings  Bryan.  It  won't  work — 
people  are  such  hogs!" 

And  the  drama  was  never  proceeded  with. 


Q 

MARK  ON  LYNCH  LAW 

They  were  talking  lynch  law  in  Professor 
Krafft-Ebing's  library  in  Vienna — some  hor 
rible  nightmare  that  had  come  in  the  latest 
cable — and  as  a  matter  of  course  Clemens 
was  asked  his  opinion  as  an  American  and 
observer  of  human  nature. 

"Lynch  law  means  mob-lawlessness,  doesn't 
it?"  he  drawled.  "Well,  what  does  it  argue? 
To  my  mind  it  argues  that  men  in  a  crowd  do 
not  act  as  they  would  as  individuals.  In  a 
crowd  they  don't  think  for  themselves,  but 
become  impregnated  by  the  contagious  senti 
ment  uppermost  in  the  minds  of  all  who  hap 
pen  to  be  en  masse.  While  in  Paris  last,  the 
family  and  I  toured  all  the  places  of  horror, 
made  odious  during  the  White  Terror — we 
followed  pretty  closely  the  scent  of  the  'Tale 
of  Two  Cities/  Michelet,  Dumas,  and  others. 
I  was  particularly  interested  in  the  'Official 
Gazette'  of  the  guillotine,  'The  Moniteur,' 
and  my  girls  helped  me  read  and  digest  many 
tell-tale  pages  yellow  with  age  and  tattered 
by  usage.  Among  other  interesting  items,  I 
found  recorded  that  on  a  certain  date  the 
Nobles  had  voted  to  forego  their  feudal  privi 
leges. 

"Now,  their  previous  failure  to  renounce 
these  same  rights  had  been  one  of  the  prime 
causes  of  the  Revolution.  Yet  when  they 
acquiesced,  they  were  put  to  the  knife  just  the 
same,  for  mob-law  ruled  then.  Another  case 

59 


in  the  'Moniteur':  I  read  of  a  deputy  named 
Monge,  the  same  whom  Napoleon  in  his  Saint 
Helena  talks  pronounced  a  most  lovable  char 
acter,  so  kind-hearted  that  he  would  never  eat 
any  fowl  if  he  had  to  kill  it  first.  Yet  in  the 
Convention,  in  the  midst  of  the  mob  of  his 
fellows,  this  same  Monge  vociferated  for  un 
limited  bloodshed,  for  'war  to  the  knife/  He 
had  caught  the  contagion  and,  intoxicated 
with  bloodthirstiness,  acted  the  madman. 

"  'I  love  my  children/  he  cried,  'but  if  the 
Convention  decrees  war  on  the  enemies  of  the 
Republic,  I  will  give  my  two  daughters  to  the 
first  two  of  our  countrymen  wounded  in 
battle/  Would  he  have  said  that  seated 
quietly  at  his  fireside?  Certainly  not.  It  was 
the  mob  that  was  talking  through  his  mouth. " 

THE  TERROR 

Mark  returned  to  the  subject  on  another 
occasion.  He  said: 

"You  know  I  have  always  been  a  great 
admirer  of  Dickens,  and  his  'Tale  of  Two 
Cities'  I  read  at  least  every  two  years.  Dick 
ens  witnessed  my  first  holding  hands  with 
Livy  when  I  took  her  to  one  of  his  lectures  in 
New  York.  Now  that  I  have  finished  'The 
Two  Cities'  for  the  'steenth  time,  I  have  come 
to  this  conclusion: 

"Terror  is  an  efficacious  agent  only  when  it 
doesn't  last.  In  the  long  run  there  is  more 
terror  in  threats  than  in  execution,  for  when 
you  get  used  to  terror  your  emotions  get 

60 


dulled.  The  incarnation  of  the  White  Terror, 
Robespierre,  wasn't  awe-inspiring  at  all  to  the 
general  public.  Mention  of  his  name  did  not 
send  the  children  to  bed,  or  make  them  crawl 
under  the  blankets.  On  the  days  when  he 
made  his  great  speeches,  the  galleries  and  the 
aisles  of  the  Convention  Hall  were  thronged 
with  women,  old  and  young — that  does  not 
look  as  if  Robespierre  had  been  an  object  of 
general  fear  or  abomination — does  it?" 


61 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  KING  CHARLES 
AND  GRANT 

"Now  show  me  the  place  where  that  ances 
tor  of  mine  had  King  Charlie  beheaded. " 

We  had  been  sitting  on  some  chairs  which 
the  great  Napoleon  had  used  in  Saint  Helena— 
the  heaviest  sort  of  mahogany,  "  and  not  a  rat 
bite  to  be  seen,"  Mark  pointed  out,  as  we 
went  exploring  the  Army  Museum  at  White 
hall,  London. 

Agreeable  to  his  demand,  I  took  Mark  by 
the  arm  and  led  him  to  a  window  looking  out 
on  the  "Horse-Guards,"  the  famous  old  bar 
racks,  gazed  at  so  much  by  American  visitors. 

"Outside  of  this  window,"  I  explained, 
"the  Commonwealth  built  a  platform,  and  on 
this  platform  stood  the  block  where  Charles 
lost  his  silly  bean. " 

"Served  the  traitor  right,"  said  Mark,  "but 
that  reminds  me  of 

He  thought  a  while,  then  repeated: 

"Why  it  reminds  me  of  (let's  see,  we  are  in 
the  second  story,  are  we  not?) — the  grand 
stand  in  front  of  the  Palmer  House,  Chicago, 
for  that  was  also  entered  from  the  windows 
of  the  second  story.  I  am  speaking  of  the 
Chicago  of  1879,  welcoming  General  Grant 
after  his  triumphal  journey  around  the  world. 
What  a  sight  the  Windy  City  was,  and  what  a 
grand  sight  he  looked  when  he  stepped  upon 
the  platform  to  review  the  Army  of  the  Ten 


nessee.  " 


62 


'Yes,"  I  interrupted,  "and  I  saw  you  on 
that  very  platform  shake  hands  with  Grant." 

But  Mark  Twain  could  not  be  tempted  to 
go  into  his  personal  history  when  General 
Grant  was  being  discussed. 

"Did  you  ever  see  a  city  so  magnificently 
and  so  patriotically  bedecked?"  he  cried. 
"  There  was  not  a  monument,  palace,  rookery, 
saloon  or  telegraph  pole  that  was  not  gay  with 
streamers  and  bunting,  pictures,  garlands, 
colored  lanterns  and  placards  of  all  sorts." 

"Yes  there  was,"  said  one  of  our  friends. 

Mark  stretched  out  his  hand  and  grabbed 
the  speaker's  arm. 

"No  nonsense  now." 

"I  am  as  serious  as  you,  and  I  say  that  the 
German  Consul,  with  offices  opposite  the 
Court  House,  did  not  have  a  flag  out  on  the 
day  of  Grant's  entry  and  reception." 

"Are  you  sure?"  demanded  Clemens. 

"As  sure  as  you  are  standing  there.  And  I 
am  proud  to-day  that  I  wrote  up  the  story  in 
the  Chicago  'Times'  and  that  Guy  Magee,  the 
city  editor,  headed  it:  "The  German  Son  of 
aB ." 

"Well  done.  I  could  not  have  written  a 
more  accurate  head  myself. " 


MARK  MISSED  GALLOWS-LAND 

"Every  time  I  went  to  Italy,"  Mark  Twain 
once  said,  "  I  felt  like  crossing  over  into  Mon- 


aco.' 


'To  gamble?" 

"Guess  again,  when  billiards  and  solitaire 
are  the  only  games  I  indulge  in.  Indeed,  I  am 
so  ignorant,  I  would  not  know  a  roulette  from 
another  baby  circus.  I  was  and  I  am  still 
crazy  to  go  to  Monaco  to  see  a  gallows,  or, 
preferably,  a  hundred  of  them. "  Mark  eyed 
his  audience  curiously.  After  an  impressive 
pause,  he  continued: 

"Once  upon  a  time,  in  the  days  of  Louis  XV 
and  Mme.  du  Barry,  there  was  a  Prince  of 
Monaco  who  was  blessed  with  a  very  beauti 
ful  wife.  Well,  evil-minded  people  said  of  this 
prince  that  he  smelled  like  a  dead  horse,  and 
Madame  the  Princess  simply  could  not  endure 
defunct  'gee-gee.'  So  she  decided  that  she 
had  a  perfect  right  to  look  for  a  soul-mate 
elsewhere,  and  be  sure  she  got  them  by  the 
score.  Of  course  not  in  Monaco,  as  it  is  such 
a  small  country.  She  went  to  France,  and 
particularly  to  Paris,  for  her  amusements. 
And  every  time  the  Prince  learned  of  a  new 
lover  worshipping  at  his  wife's  shrine,  he  set 
up  a  gallows  and  hung  the  favored  one  in 
effigy  with  frightful  ceremonies. 

"The  country,  as  remarked,  being  rather 
Lilliputian,  his  Highness  had  to  go  to  the  fron 
tiers  for  his  gallows  planting,  and  as  Madame 


the  Princess  was  of  a  very  changeable  nature 
the  principality,  in  the  course  of  several  years, 
became  enclosed  in  a  regular  fence  of  gallows 
trees.  When  Paris  heard  of  this,  it  laughed 
boisterously  at  the  Prince's  strange  humor  and 
Madame  the  Princess's  latest  lover  swore  that 
he  would  go  to  Monaco,  rob  the  gallows  of 
their  manikins  and  carry  them  off  to  the  future 
Champs  Elysees  for  a  marionette  show. 

"He  tried — with  a  band  of  companions,  but 
got  pinched  and  was  hanged  by  the  neck  in 
person,  and  not  in  effigy.  Now,  I  wondered 
whether  these  gallows  are  still  standing/' 
concluded  Mark,  "and  if  not,  I  wanted  to  find 
their  habitat  anyhow — make  a  map  of  gallows- 
land,  so  to  speak." 

Too  bad  Mark  missed  writing  a  book  on  so 
promising  a  subject. 


THINK  OF  HER  SORROWS 

He  read  to  several  friends  in  Vienna  what 
he  had  written  about  the  murdered  Empress 
Elizabeth.  "I  know  it  is  full  of  exaggeration/' 
he  admitted.  "I  did  gown  her  with  virtues 
she  never  thought  of  possessing  and  I  have 
denied  all  her  frailties.  As  I  learn  now,  she 
was  just  an  ordinary  woman,  and  her  sur 
passing  vanity  was  the  only  extraordinary 
thing  about  her.  But  think  how  much  she 
suffered  and  think  of  the  man  she  was  married 
to.  Re-read,  too,  that  story  about  the  mur 
dered  Rudolph.  When  Count  Something  ap- 
E reached  her  to  break  the  news,  she  ran  to 
im  wringing  her  hands  and  cried:  'MyRudy 
is  dead.  Oh,  my  Rudy!'  What  told  this 
Niobe  among  royal  women  that  her  son  had 
been  destroyed — killed  in  a  low  debauch? 
When  I  reflect  how  she  maintained  her  self- 
respect  in  a  life  of  constant  disappointment 
and  tragedy,  I  think  I  did  well  making  her  out 
a  noble  soul. ' 


66 


BREAKING  THE  NEWS  GENTLY 

Returning  to  Vienna  from  a  flying  trip  to 
Budapest,  Mark  was  full  of  "  a  yarn  that  would 
illustrate  like  a  circus  and  run  for  five  years, 
every  Sunday  a  page. "  He  said  he  heard  the 
story  at  the  archduke  Joseph's  country  place, 
the  same  Joseph  who,  towards  the  end  of  the 
war,  tried  to  make  himself  King  of  Hungary 
and  failed,  but  the  probabilities  are  that  the 
story  was  Mark's  own,  with  Magyar  trim 
mings.  It  ran  as  follows: 

A  great  landowner,  after  a  business  trip 
of  several  months,  returned  to  Budapest,  and 
was  met  at  the  station  by  his  carriage  and 
pair  that  was  to  take  him  to  his  estate  in  the 
country. 

"Everything  well  at  home?"  he  asked  the 
coachman. 

"Excellently  well,"  replied  the  driver, 
cracking  his  whip. 

After  a  while  the  Baron  ventured  another 
question : 

"Why  didn't  you  bring  my  dogs  along?" 
he  asked. 

"Dogs  are  sick,  your  Excellency." 

"My  dogs  sick?     How  did  that  happen?" 

"Ate  too  much  fried  horse." 

"Fried  horse?     Where  did  they  get  that?" 

"Stable  burned  down." 

"My  stable  burned  down,  cattle  and  all? 
Awful !  What  about  the  castle  ? " 

"Oh,  the  castle  is  all  right." 

6? 


The  Baron  thought  it  over  for  the  space  of 
a  mile,  then  said: 

"You  are  sure  the  castle  was  not  hurt  by 
the  fire?" 

"Sure,  only  the  two  wings  burned  down." 

"But  the  family  is  safe?" 

"Yes,  the  family  is  all  right." 

When  the  horses  entered  upon  their  tenth 
mile,  the  Baron  resumed  his  examination: 

"Children  all  well?" 

"All  well  and  happy,  except  Janos  and 
Maritzka,  who  were  burned. " 

"Burned,  oh  Lord!  And  the  Baroness, 
my  wife?" 

"Oh,  she  is  better  off  than  any  of  us.  God 
has  her  in  His  holy  keeping.  She  was  burned 
to  death.  Yes,  indeed,  she  died  with  her 
mother  and  in  her  arms. " 

"This  is  what  I  call  breaking  the  news 
gently,"  said  Mark. 


68 


DUKES  AND  UNBORN  CAR  HORSES 

I  told  Mark  Twain  of  the  Princes  and  Dukes 
of  Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,  "in  meeting  assem 
bled"  at  London,  who  had  protested  against 
the  expulsion  of  their  kinsman,  Dom  Pedro, 
from  the  throne  of  Brazil. 

"  Just  as  efficacious  as  if  the  car  horses  that 
remain  unbred  since  the  arrival  of  the  trolley 
sued  the  Brooklyn  Rapid  Transit,  or  the 
Third  Avenue  electric  line,  for  murder," 
snapped  Mark. 


"PA  USED  TO  BE  A  TERRIBLE  MAN" 

With  Mark's  daughter  Susie,  I  was  walking 
in  the  Berlin  Thiergarten  one  afternoon  when 
we  encountered  a  very  rough  specimen  of  the 
genus  tramp. 

"Look  at  him,"  said  Susie.  "You  know, 
Pa,  too,  was  an  awful  man  before  Mamma  took 
him  in  hand  and  married  him."  And  with 
added  seriousness,  she  continued:  "He  used 
to  swear  and  swear,  and  then  swear  again,  and 
the  only  thing  that  he  didn't  do  that  was  bad 
was  to  let  cards  and  liquor  alone — some  kinds 
of  liquor." 

It  is  too  bad  that  I  forget  Mark's  comment 
on  the  above  when  I  told  him. 


70 


MARK  ON  THE  BERLIN  COPS 

You  know,  of  course,  that  Mark  Twain  at 
one  time  had  a  flat  in  Berlin  and  kept  it  going 
for  a  whole  month.  "I  am  tired  of  hotels/' 
he  said,  "and  hereafter  I  am  going  to  take  my 
comfort  in  my  apartment  as  Dr.  Johnson  took 
his  in  his  inn."  After  that  he  entertained  the 
habitues  of  the  embassy  for  a  week  or  longer 
with  stories  of  the  beauties  of  home  life,  until 
we  voted  " Koernerstrasse  Nr.  7  the  jewel." 

But  one  fine  evening  I  found  a  note  from 
him  at  the  Hotel  de  Rome,  asking  me  to  call 
at  the  Royal  at  8  too.  I  met  him  in  the  lobby 
with  several  sympathizing  friends,  and  he  said: 

"It's  all  up  with  Koernerstrasse;  too  much 
police." 

" Did  you  have  burglars,  or  the  bailiffs,  in?" 
was  asked. 

"Neither;  just  social  calls  from  policemen — 
ten  per  day.  The  cops  weren't  exactly  un 
kind,  but  they  annoyed  me." 

"What  did  they  do  to  you?" 

"Asked  questions." 

"Income  queries?" 

"Yes,  of  course,  but  I  don't  mind  lying 
about  little  things  like  that.  On  the  contrary, 
making  a  clean  breast  of  it,  I  confessed  that  I 
get  a  whole  cent  a  word  for  every  word  I  do, 
even  for  little  words  like  '  I '  or  '  Manafraidof- 
hismotherinlaw. '  Did  they  believe  me?  Not 
they!  They  thought  I  was  exaggerating." 

"What  did  they  ask  about  next?" 


"Craved  information  about  Eliza  and 
Marie.  *  Don't  know  any  such  females/  I 
growled  severely. 

1  'Mr.  Clemens/  bawled  the  policeman, 
'if  you  are  trying  to  hoodwink  the  Royal 
Police  of  Berlin,  there  will  be  trouble.  Con 
fess  now.  You  have  an  Eliza  and  a  Marie  and 
a  Gretchen  in  this  house.' 

"  'Oh,  you  mean  the  maids/  said  I.  'I 
don't  know  anything  about  them.  My  Missus 
hires  and  bosses  them.  Ask  the  girls  whether 
I  am  stringing  you.' 

"That  evidently  made  no  hit  with  the 
policeman,  for  he  vociferated  respectfully  but 
sternly: 

'It  is  your  duty  (according  to  paragraph 
this  and  that  of  the  Civil  Code)  as  head  of  the 
household  (according  to  paragraph  so  and  so 
of  the  Civil  Code)  to  be  informed  whether  or 
not  these  girls  have  been  properly  vaccinated.' 

"His  'head  of  the  household'  made  me 
laugh,  but  I  managed  to  object:  'How  should 
I  know?' 

'Don't  you  see  them  around  with  bare 
arms  ? ' 

1  'Maybe  I  do,  but  I  never  paid  enough 
attention  to  say  offhand  whether  they  wear 
cuticle  or  fur. ' 

"  'And  you  didn't  notice  vaccination  marks 
on  their  arms?' 

'Never.     I  can  swear  to  that. ' 
'Then   you  do  know,  that  they  are  not 
vaccinated  on  their  arms/    said  the  police- 

72 


man  ever  so  insinuatingly.      I'll  bet  he  read 
up  the  story  of  the  serpent  in  Paradise. 

1  'On  the  contrary,  I  dont  know  whether 
they  are  vaccinated  on  their  arms  or  not/ 
I  answered  truthfully.  *  Maybe  they  had 
themselves  vaccinated  under  their  arms.  I 
haven't  looked.' 

'Some  women/  said  the  policeman,  'are 
so  vain  that  they  get  themselves  vaccinated 
on  their  legs. ' 

'  'Possibly/  I  said,  'but  I  have  looked 
neither  under  their  arms  nor  under  their 
petticoats — I  presume  they  have  legs.  How 
ever,  I  don't  know  anything  about  them,  for 
sure.  And  this  being  their  day  out,  if  you 
must  investigate,  they  will  be  back  about 
ten  o'clock,  and,  returning,  you  may  look 
for  yourself,  if  the  law  says  so. ' : 

Mark  indulged  in  one  of  his  impressive 
pauses,  then  continued: 

"That  policeman  did  return  and  told  the 
girls  that  he  was  authorized  by  me  to  look 
for  their  vaccination  marks  wherever  located. 
Of  course,  it  caused  a  row  all  around,  the 
girls  protesting  that  I  was  no  gentleman.  So, 
to  end  it  all,  I  paid  the  rent  for  the  whole 
year,  eleven  months'  rent,  and  left  the  flat." 


73 


THE  SAUSAGE  ROOM 

James  R.  Osgood,  the  former  Boston  pub 
lisher,  later  a  member  of  the  new  firm  of 
Osgood,  Mcllvain  &  Company  in  London, 
for  whom  I  was  doing  the  translation  of 
Field  Marshal  Count  Moltke's  works,  had 
given  me  a  set  of  Memoirs  of  the  Margravine 
of  Bayreuth  for  Christmas,  and  when  I  went 
to  see  Mark  Twain  at  the  Royal  in  Berlin 
during  his  illness,  I  took  the  two  small 
volumes  along  and  offered  to  loan  them  to 
the  sick  man.  He  was  as  pleased  as  a  three- 
year-old  with  a  new  toy. 

"I  always  wanted  to  read  these  Memoirs," 
he  said.  "She  was  a  corker,  that  sister  of 
the  Great  Frederick.  I  most  heartily  admire 
her.  You  know  Howells  did  this  translation 
while  U.  S.  Consul  in  Italy  and  they  say  it 
is  the  best  ever. "  He  dived  into  volume  one 
and  I  left,  to  return  next  day.  When  he 
heard  me  talk  in  the  vestibule  to  Mrs. 
Clemens,  he  hollered  out: 

"This  way  to  the  sausage  room,  where  Her 
Royal  Highness'  slave  keeps. " 

I  went  in. 

"I  am  reading  this  book  for  the  second 
time,"  he  said,  "and  it  actually  makes  me 
forget  that  I  am  sick.  I  forget  even  coughing 
my  soul  out." 

Mrs.  Clemens  seemed  to  be  annoyed  about 
the  "sausage,"  but  Clemens  said  that  Heine 
had  had  the  same  sort  of  chamber  when  ill 

74 


so  long,  and  as  the  poet  was  quite  contented 
"with  his  French  Soucisson,"  he  must  be  with 
his  "Frankfurter. "  As  a  matter  of  fact,  for 
its  length,  the  room  was  extremely  narrow. 

"If  it  had  legs,  I  would  call  it  a  dachshund" 
suggested  Mark,  when  Livy  kept  on  grum 
bling. 

I  asked  whether  he  had  many  visitors  and 
he  said: 

:<Yes,  a  few  every  day.  As  many  as  I  can 
stand.  But  the  women  have  all  deserted  me. 
There  is  a  bunch  of  American  girls  in  Berlin 
just  now,  but  none  find  their  way  to  the 
Royal.  I  am  without  a  " Mouche"  (French 
for  fly) — I  mean  the  human  kind — the  same 
as  enlivened  Heine's  dying  days.  What  a 
girl  that  Mouche  was!  I  think  she  inspired 
some  of  his  finest  shorter  poems.  She  was  a 
real  comfort  to  him,  too.  Maybe  she  was 
after  advertising  and  liked  to  make  Mathilda 
jealous.  But,  what  of  it?  She  made  Heine 
laugh  and  Heine's  songs  will  make  the  world 
happier  as  long  as  it  stands." 

While  talking,  he  was  groping  in  the  air 
after  flies  and  at  last  caught  one  He  held 
it  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand  listening  to  its 
buzzing  for  a  while,  then  asked  me  to  take  it 
in  my  own  hand,  never  hurt  it,  open  the 
window  and  let  it  fly  out. 

"I  learned  that  from  Tolstoy,"  he  said. 
"Tolstoy,  you  know,  used  to  catch  lots  of 
mice  in  his  house,  but  never  killed  them  or 
gave  them  to  the  cat.  He  carried  them  out 

75 


to  the  forest  and  there  set  them  free.  Why 
should  a  human  being  kill  little  animals? 
Because  a  tiger  may  want  to  eat  me — that's 
no  reason  why  I  should  turn  tiger,  is  it?" 

He  returned  to  the  subject  of  the  Margra 
vine  Wilhelmina. 

"They  thought  I  went  to  Bayreuth  to  hear 
Wagner/'  he  said.  "Nothing  of  the  kind.  I 
like  his  Wedding  March  hugely  and  very  little 
else  he  has  done.  But,  while  Livy  and  the 
kids  went  to  pieces  over  Tristan  und  Isolde 
and  The  Nibelungen,  I  visited  the  grave  of 
the  Margravine  and  looked  at  the  temples 
and  grottoes  and  houses  she  built,  the  statues 
and  fountains  she  set  up,  the  beauty  she 
lavished  on  the  landscape!  Ah,  Wilhelmina 
would  have  been  the  woman  for  me — for  a 
week  or  two,  I  mean,  even  as  I  would  like 
to  have  been  the  Great  Frederick's  dinner 
companion  for  a  little  while. " 


76 


MARK'S  GLIMPSE  OF 
SCHOPENHAUER 

As  Mark's  German  was  getting  worse 
instead  of  better,  and  as  his  French  was  no 
where,  he  asked  me  to  accompany  him  on 
his  contemplated  exploration  of  the  Berlin 
Royal  Library.  I  told  the  librarian  about 
our  great  friend,  about  the  interest  he  took 
in  German  affairs,  and,  in  particular,  I  re 
called  that  he  had  met  the  Kaiser  at  dinner. 
Of  course  the  librarian  turned  himself  inside 
out  to  be  agreeable  to  both  of  us. 

After  showing  us  around  a  good  deal,  he 
gave  us  an  alcove  to  work  in,  saying:  "In 
this  set  of  drawers  you  will  find  some  most 
private  papers  of  the  royal  family  that  are 
perhaps  of  public  interest,  but  the  public, 
please  remember,  must  learn  nothing  of  them. 
They  are  only  to  be  seen  by  people  of  dis 
cretion,  who  value  historical  knowledge  for 
history's  sake." 

Most  of  the  books,  pamphlets  and  man 
uscripts  we  found  dated  from  the  times  of 
Frederick  the  Great  and  of  course  they  were 
in  French,  since  Frederick  neither  read  nor 
wrote  German  intelligently.  There  was  in 
particular  a  volume  of  verse  by  Voltaire 
addressed  to  Frederick,  with  original  illus 
trations  by  some  French  artist,  but  the  poetry 
was  too  grossly  indecent  to  have  interest  for 
persons  outside  of  a  psychopathic  ward. 

77 


I  translated  some  of  the  verses  to  Mark, 
who  said:  uToo  much  is  enough.  I  would 
blush  to  remember  any  of  these  stanzas 
except  to  tell  Krafft-Ebing  about  them  when 
I  get  to  Vienna." 

I  copied  one  verse  for  him,  and  as  he  put 
it  in  his  pocket  he  said: 

"Livy  is  so  busy  mispronouncing  German 
these  days  she  can't  even  attempt  to  get  at 
this." 

After  some  rummaging,  Mark  pulled  out  a 
manuscript  that  seemed  to  be  of  more  recent 
date. 

"German  or  Chinese  laundry  tickets?" 
he  asked. 

"It's  German,"  I  said,  glancing  at  it. 

There  were  about  ten  pages  of  copy,  neatly 
written  and  headed  "Mein  Briefkasten"  (My 
letterbox).  On  the  line  below  was  the  title: 
"Tetragamy  by  Schopenhauer." 

Mark  was  at  once  interested. 

"Schopenhauer,  the  arch-misogynist,"  he 
mused,  "let  me  see,  physically  he  might  have 
been  the  grandfather  of  queer  Strindberg  of 
the  land  where  the  matches  come  from.  Ever 
read  any  of  his  books  or  dramas?"  he  asked, 
and  before  I  could  deny  the  implication,  he 
was  off  talking  again:  "I  have  studied 
Strindberg's  womankind,  hard-faced,  sullen, 
cold-blooded,  cheeky,  grasping,  vindictive, 
hell-raising,  unvirtuous,  unkind  vixens,  all  of 
them — a  dead  give-away  on  the  author's 

78 


part,  for  a  writer  who  sees  no  good  in  women 
confesses  that  he  was  found  out  by  the  sex 
he  wars  on  and  that  the  female  of  the  species 
pronounced  him  n.  g.  before  he  had  time  to 
out-Ibsen  the  Norwegian.  If  I  ever  turn  over 
a  new  leaf  and  beat  Livy,  bet  your  life  I  will 
have  naught  but  honeyed  words  and  sweet 
metaphor  for  the  ladies.  This  fellow  Strind- 
berg's  women  are  all  compounds  of  vile 
ingredients — hideous  hags  with  or  without 
angel-faces — wife-beater  Strindberg  whipping 
dead  mares.  Well,  to  return  to  Schopenhauer 
(to  me  as  incomprehensible  as  mutton)  what's 
this?"  (pointing  to  the  word  Tetragamy), 
"Hebrew  or  merely  Yiddish?" 

"Literally  it  means  marrying  a  fourth 
wife. "  I  examined  the  first  page  of  the  man 
uscript.  "Seems  to  deal  with  conditions  due 
to  monogamy. " 

"Good,"  exclaimed  Mark,  "I  have  always 
wanted  to  reform  monogamy,  when  my  wife 
isn't  looking.  Now  let's  have  the  medicine 
straight." 

"But,"  I  said,  "I  can't  do  this  long  MS. 
justice  here.  The  librarian  will  come  in 
presently  and  you  heard  what  he  told  us." 

"Well,"  said  Mark,  "you  sit  down  and 
copy  the  German  while  I  cover  you  with 
my  broad  back.  Should  the  librarian  in 
trude,  I  will  knock  on  the  floor. " 

Accordingly,  I  copied  those  several  pages,  and 
afterwards  made  the  translation  Mark  wanted. 

79 


But  for  several  days  Mark  didn't  show  up 
at  his  usual  haunts,  and  even  Mr.  Phelps, 
the  American  Minister  in  Berlin,  didn't  know 
what  had  become  of  him.  The  telephone 
was  but  sparingly  used  then  in  the  legation 
offices.  However,  on  the  third  or  fourth  day, 
Mr.  Phelps  learned  that  Mark  was  down 
with  bronchitis  at  his  hotel,  the  Royal,  and 
that  when  he  wasn't  sneezing  or  coughing, 
ennui  plagued  him  sadly. 

"Well,"  I  said,  "I  have  got  something  to 
liven  him  up,"  and  showed  Mr.  Phelps  the 
manuscript.  He  advised  me  to  send  it  at 
once  to  the  Royal,  but  when  I  called  on  Mark 
Twain  a  week  later  and  inquired  sotto  voce 
whether  he  had  received  the  manuscript,  he 
said: 

"Of  course  not.  The  wife  got  it  and  you 
know  she  won't  let  me  read  anything  but 
tracts.  I  suppose  she  burnt  our  MS. " 

"Well,"  I  said,  "I  have  got  a  carbon  and 
I  will  let  you  have  that  by  and  by. " 

"Not  while  I'm  at  home,"  he  said,  "for 
now  she  is  on  the  scent,  she  will  watch  out. 
She  is  dreadfully  afraid  that  some  one  may 
corrupt  me. " 

Mark  remained  indoors  for  over  a  month, 
the  thing  was  forgotten,  and  later,  when  he 
asked  for  the  manuscript,  I  couldn't  find  it. 
Other  interests  came  up  and  Schopenhauer 
was  shelved,  though  at  the  time  we  made  the 
find,  Mark  speculated  on  getting  a  book  out 
of  it  by  amplifying  it  with  other  writings  of 

80 


the  philosopher,  particularly  his  "Fragments 
of  Philosophy"  and  his  "Pandectes  et  Spici- 
legia";  the  latter  are  still  in  manuscript  or, 
at  least,  were  in  manuscript  in  the  early 
nineties. 

If  Mark  were  alive  to-day,  how  happy  he 
would  be  at  the  discovery  I  made  quite 
recently  in  an  old  chest  of  drawers.  I  had 
seen  a  movie  play,  showing  the  extravagant 
amounts  of  money  one  can  earn  by  selling 
old  manuscripts — including  the  rejection  slips 
— and  I  started  cleaning  up  an  old  piece  of 
furniture  wanted  for  less  ideal  purposes.  And 
there  I  found  the  long  lost  Schopenhauer 
MS.  According  to  the  notes,  this  man 
uscript  belonged  to  a  parcel  of  handwritten 
essays  willed  by  the  philosopher  to  the  Royal 
Library  at  Berlin  and  dealing  with  themes 
and  matters  that  Schopenhauer  hoped  to 
work  out  and  improve  upon  by  and  by. 
But  death  overtook  him  before  he  could 
exploit  the  problem  in  hand.  Here  follows 
the  MS.  Mark  was  not  allowed  to  see: 

Schopenhauer  s  Tetr agamy. 

The    Philosopher's   Attempt  to   reform    social 

conditions  due  to  Monogamy. 

Neither  woman's  frailty  nor  man's  ego 
ism  should  be  held  responsible  for  those 
frequent  miscarriages  of  domestic  happiness 
encountered  in  married  life.  Nature  itself 
is  to  blame.  If  the  state  of  monogamy,  as 
some  of  the  philosophers  will  have  it,  is  the 

81 


natural  one,  then  nature  disarranged  its  own 
scheme  beforehand  by  making  woman's  sex 
ual  life  twenty  or  thirty  or  even  forty  years 
shorter  than  man's. 

At  the  present  time  males  and  females  in 
the  civilized  world  are  about  equal  in  number. 
This,  too,  is  taken  for  proof  that  nature 
favored  monogamy.  It  is  a  fact,  on  the  other 
hand,  observable  in  practical  life  as  well  as 
by  medical  investigation,  that  a  woman  is 
well  able  physically  to  be  the  wife  of  two  men 
at  the  same  time. 

There  are  no  healthier  and  more  beautiful 
women,  of  their  kind,  than  the  Tedas  of  Asia 
who  marry  besides  their  chief-husband  all 
his  brothers,  no  matter  how  many  he  has  got. 

We  do  not  go  so  far  as  to  advocate  poly 
andry.  Polyandry  is  a  condition  based  on  a 
low  state  of  civilization.  But  basing  our 
proposition  on  physical  grounds,  we  venture 
to  assert  that  tetragamy,  reorganized  and 
protected  by  law,  would  be  a  married  state 
doing  away  with  most  of  the  evils  of  monog 
amy  from  the  man's  standpoint,  while  con 
tributing  to  woman's  happiness. 

We  propose  the  introduction  of  a  new  form 
of  marriage  on  the  following  lines.  Instead 
of  one  man  marrying  one  woman  for  better 
or  worse,  we  propose  that  two  men,  friends 
of  course,  marry  one  woman,  always  a  young 
and  healthy  person,  with  this  understanding: 

After  the  woman  has  reached  a  certain 
age,  the  two  friends  shall  be  at  liberty  to 

82 


marry  another  young  woman,  but  without 
divorcing  or  abandoning  the  first. 

The  second  woman  shall  provide  the  men, 
if  she  lives,  with  a  capable  and  loving  mate 
for  the  rest  of  their  lives. 

Such  a  state  of  things  would  result  in  the 
happiness  of  two  women,  both  would  be 
taken  care  of  for  life  and  there  would  be  no 
rivalry  either. 

As  far  as  the  men  are  concerned,  tetrag- 
amy  would  do  away  with  a  passion  leading 
to  so  many  fatalities:  jealousy. 

Now  let  us  look  at  tetragamy,  as  defined, 
from  an  economic  standpoint. 

At  the  present  time,  the  average  young 
couple  enters  into  the  marriage  state  when 
the  man's  capacity  as  a  provider  is  unequal 
to  the  demands  of  the  average  pleasure-loving 
woman.  His  meagre  resources  do  not  allow 
him  to  supply  her  with  the  luxuries  she 
craves,  nor  has  he  as  much  money  for  himself 
as  before  marriage.  It  would  be  a  waste  of 
words  to  point  out  that  these  conditions  are 
responsible  for  much  unhappiness  among 
married  folks. 

Take  a  case  of  poverty.  Many  a  man  who 
can  hardly  support  himself  tries  to  support 
a  wife,  and  not  only  a  wife,  but  children, 
numbers  of  them!  What  is  the  result?  The 
woman,  driven  by  want,  for  the  love  of  her 
children,  becomes  a  breadwinner  on  her  own 
account.  The  time  she  ought  to  devote  to 

83 


her  little  ones,  born  or  unborn,  she  spends 
in  the  factory,  at  the  washboard  or  sewing 
machine. 

Is  that  natural?  If  nature  favored  such 
a  state  of  affairs,  nature  would  be  illogical, 
and  who  dare  assert  so  monstrous  a  thing? 

In  the  state  of  tetragamy,  man  has  to  bear 
but  one-half  of  the  household's  expenses. 
This  gives  him  a  chance  to  save  money  and 
to  do  something  for  his  education,  while  the 
children,  being  supported  by  two  men,  have 
better  clothes,  better  food,  more  love,  and  a 
better  home. 

Tetragamy  would  make  for  morality,  be 
cause  it  would  make  it  easier  for  men  to  get 
married.  It  would  make  for  morality  because 
woman,  having  two  husbands,  would  not  be 
longing  for  an  affinity.  And  when  old,  she 
would  not  suffer  from  the  thought,  or  from 
the  actual  knowledge,  that  her  husband 
betrays  her. 

Things  are  different  to-day.  The  man  who 
marries  young  sees  the  fire  of  love  extin 
guished  in  the  woman  at  his  side  after  a 
certain  number  of  years. 

As  to  the  average  woman,  in  the  state  of 
monogamy,  she  is  only  too  often  compelled 
to  marry  a  man  physically  inferior  to  her. 
If  she  escapes  that  fate,  then,  in  the  course 
of  time,  she  must  needs  come  to  the  conclu 
sion  that  she  is  too  old  for  her  husband. 

But  I  am  not  unaware  that  there  are  serious 
objections. 

84 


As  to  the  children,  their  identity  would  be 
determined  by  their  looks. 

As  to  possible  differences — they  will  not 
be  greater  than  in  marriage  as  it  is  to-day. 
If  people  are  inclined  to  fight,  they  will  do  so 
under  any  conditions,  good,  bad  or  indif 
ferent.  For  my  own  part  I  am  inclined  to 
think  that  there  will  be  less  fighting,  since 
jealousy  will  be  eliminated  beforehand. 

What  about  financial  affairs?  There  should 
be  no  communism,  of  course.  Each  man 
could  contribute  his  share  and  the  woman 
should  be  allowed  free  disposal  of  her  savings. 

Of  course,  the  state  must  take  the  first 
woman  under  its  protection.  She  can  never 
be  abandoned  and  can  be  divorced  for  cause 
only. 

Under  the  sway  of  monogamy  duties  and 
nature  are  forever  in  conflict.  Woman  is 
tempted  when  young,  is  abandoned  morally 
or  physically  or  both  when  old. 

If  this  be  natural,  then  nature  should  be 
reformed  and  tetragamy  substituted  for  mo 
nogamy. 


"MURDERER"  BLUCHER  IN 
OXFORD 

"Oxford,  though  you  might  not  think  so, 
has  a  traffic  cop,  the  same  as  Forty-Second 
Street  and  Fifth  Avenue,"  said  Mark  in  the 
Savoy  Lounge  across  the  teacups  after  the 
excitement  over  his  triumph  in  the  British 
University  metropolis  had  cooled  down  a  bit. 
"He  is  a  smart  guy — actually  remembers 
Holmes'  visit  and  asked  me  about  the  old 
man.  He  spoke  of  him  as  'Ome's,  Sweet 
Ome's.'  When  you  come  to  think  of  it,  it's 
a  good  name,  after  all. 

"Among  other  interesting  things,  not  con 
nected  with  the  University,  was  a  public 
house  sign  I  lit  upon  at  a  corner  not  far  from 
our  inn.  It  showed  a  great  warrior  on  a 
fierce  charger.  *  General  Blucher'  was  written 
across  the  bottom.  It  gave  me  quite  a  start 
when  I  learned  that  on  this  spot,  in  1816  or 
1817,  Blucher  hollered  for  a  drink  and  got  it 
when  on  his  way  to  the  University." 

"What  did  he  want  with  the  University?" 
I  queried. 

"He  was  crowned  a  doctor  there  after 
Waterloo. 

"I  tell  you,  that  took  me  down  a  peg,  or 
rather  a  whole  row  of  pegs.  Blucher  a  doctor 
like  myself!  I  knew  him  as  a  foul-mouthed, 
cruel,  pestiferous,  and  thieving  scoundrel — 
occasionally  lucky  in  the  field.  But  now  I 
wanted  to  know  more  about  him  and  I  have 

86 


haunted  the  British  Museum  for  additional 
facts.  What  do  you  think  I  learned?  Blucher, 
who  was  dirty  and  slouchy  by  nature,  dressed 
up  on  the  eve  of  battle: — best  tunic,  fancy 
sword,  gilt  lace,  feathered  hat  and  what-not! 
And  he  had  himself  bathed,  rouged  and 
powdered,  manicured  and  curry-combed. 

"  'I  feel  like  a  girl  going  to  her  first  ball/ 
he  used  to  say. 

"And  people  like  that,  who  delight  in 
murder  and  rapine,  receive  honorary  degrees ! " 


0 


MARK'S  HUMAN  SIDE 


Susan,  Jean,  and  Clara  Clemens,  papa 
Mark,  and  myself  were  having  lots  of  fun  at 
the  famous  Salamonski  Circus  in  Berlin — 
Mark  and  I  laughing  with  the  children  when 
there  was  nothing  else  to  interest  us.  There 
was  a  girl  of  1 6  or  17  doing  a  stunt  on  a  horse. 
Mark  said:  "The  poor  child  looks  as  if  she 
had  never  had  a  square  meal  in  her  life — 
isn't  that  professional  smile  of  hers  too  sad 
for  words?"  While  she  was  doing  a  salto 
mortale,  a  clown  ran  in  and  dived  between 
the  horse's  legs.  The  horse  got  frightened 
and  threw  the  rider.  Of  course,  the  children 
thought  this  part  of  the  program,  and  laughed 
heartily.  But  the  girl  didn't  attempt  to  get 
up,  and  when  the  riding  master  tried  to  raise 
her,  she  cried  and  moaned,  and  one  of  her  legs 
hung  down  lifeless,  while  the  blood  spurted 
through  her  white  tights. 

"  Keep  still,  children, "  said  Mark.  "  Don't 
you  see  the  poor  girl  is  hurt?" 

A  stretcher  came  and  carried  off  the  moan 
ing  girl  and  the  performance  proceeded  as  if 
nothing  had  happened.  But  though  the 
children  begged  hard,  Mark  would  not  stay. 

"Another  time,  not  now,"  he  insisted. 

Just  then  a  gypsy-looking,  elderly  woman 
came  running  from  behind  the  scenes,  looking 
about  wildly.  When  her  eye  located  the 
clown,  she  rushed  up  to  him  and  hit  him  a 


terrible  blow  in  the  face.  :<You  have  ruined 
my  girl.  She  will  never  be  able  to  ride 
again,"  she  cried. 

"  Served  him  right, "  said  Mark.  "  I  do  hope 
the  manager  gets  a  clout  on  the  jaw,  too. 
For  he  really  is  the  responsible  guy.  The 
clown  has  to  get  laughs,  the  girl  has  to  risk 
her  limbs,  so  that  the  manager  may  coin 
money.  What  a  world  this  is,  what  a  world ! 
And  you  and  I,  too!  I  never  thought  of 
kicking  myself  for  laughing  when  that  poor 
girl  broke  her  leg — nor  did  you,  I  bet. " 


89 


AN  AUSTRALIAN  SURPRISE 

At  the  time  when  Mark  was  living  quietly 
at  Ledworth  Square,  London,  writing  "Around 
the  World,"  we  met  a  party  of  Australians  at 
the  Metropole  one  afternoon.  It  was  after 
poor  Susie's  death,  and  the  heartbroken  father 
hadn't  made  anyone  laugh  for  months.  But 
those  "Aussies  kind  of  woke  me  up,"  he 
admitted.  "Jolly  guys,  out  there  at  the  An 
tipodes,"  he  said  after  the  first  round;  "too 
bad  I  didn't  know  that  when  I  struck  Sydney. 
As  I  prepared  to  step  upon  the  platform 
there,  I  wondered,  with  some  fear  and  trepida 
tion,  whether  your  people  would  take  kindly 
to  my  brand  of  humor.  If  they  refused  to  be 
tickled  by  my  first  lecture — God  have  mercy 
upon  my  creditors!  Of  course  I  had  my  story 
pat.  Still,  as  I  climbed  those  steps,  I  debated 
in  my  mind  whether  or  not  I  had  better  sub 
stitute  such  or  such  a  yarn  for  the  opening 
lines  planned.  I  had  half  decided  to  risk  a 
change,  when  I  faced  the  audience  and — the 
pleasantest,  the  most  overwhelming  surprise 
of  my  life!  I  met  a  sea,  a  whole  Atlantic,  of 
guffawing  heads,  of  swaying  bodies  and  shoul 
ders.  There  wasn't  a  titter  or  a  snicker; 
there  wasn't  any  smirking  or  grinning;  all 
eyes  were  in  flood  with  genuine  laughter; 
men,  women,  and  children  were  crowing  and 
chuckling  aloud,  were  shouting  and  hurray 
ing,  everybody  was  convulsed — really  I  must 
have  looked  the  white  kangaroo  for  which 

90 


I  was  named.  The  Sydney  audience  laughing 
at  me  before  I  opened  my  mouth  clinched 
my  success  at  the  Antipodes." 


MARK  IN  FRANCE  AND  ITALY 

From  Paris  Mark  Twain  usually  returned 
disgruntled.  His  stories  did  not  go  in  France, 
and  there  was  that  "Dreyfus  affair"  that 
made  him  sick  of  the  "frog-eaters  forever  and 
a  day."  Nor  was  Mark  appreciated  in  Italy. 

"The  Dagoes/'  he  used  to  say,  "like  their 
humor  colored  with  politics,  of  which  I  know 
nothing,  or  flavored  with  risque  stories,  which 
my  wife  won't  let  me  write — there  you  are. 
As  to  France — one  critical  Madame  gave  me 
to  understand  that  I  am  'lacking  in  the  stu 
pendous  task  of  interpreting  the  great  tab 
leaux  of  real  American  life. '  See?  When  a 
wet  blanket  of  that  kind  is  clapped  on  to  you, 
what  is  the  use  of  further  efforts?  I  am  a 
dead  one,  according  to  Madame,  and  Mark 
Twain  is  too  humane  to  whip  a  dead  horse. 
I  will  tell  you  what  is  really  the  matter  with 
France,"  concluded  Twain.  "Every  French 
man  who  can  read  and  write  has  in  his  closet 
a  frock  coat  embroidered  with  the  lilies  (or 
whatever  flower  it  may  be)  of  the  Academic 
Frangaise — hoping  against  hope  that  he  may 
be  elected  to  the  Institute  like  Moliere  or 
Zola.  Hence  Monsieur  is  very  critical  and 
pronounces  everything  he  doesn't  understand 
'bosh!'  A  joke  in  Chicago,  you  know,  is 
a  riddle  in  Paris,  and,  as  one  Frenchman  put 
it,  '  I  get  guffaws  out  of  people  by  thumping 
them  on  the  ribs. '  I  would  never  dare  thump 
a  Frenchman,  of  course — I  might  bust  him. " 

92 


WHY  MARK  WOULDN'T  LIKE  TO  DIE 
ABROAD 

Mark  Twain  cracked  so  many  jokes,  I 
thought  I  would  entertain  him  a  bit  myself, 
and  told  him  about  an  aunt  of  mine  who, 
while  dying,  heard  that  she  was  going  to  lie 
in  state  in  the  green  room. 

"Not  in  the  green  room,"  said  auntie.  "I 
always  hated  that  wall  paper.  Besides,  it's 
unhealthy. " 

Twain  admitted  that  was  good  fun,  and 
regretted  not  having  thought  of  the  green 
paper  himself. 

"She  must  have  been  a  fine  old  girl,"  he 
said,  "to  stand  up  for  her  rights  even  'in 
extremis,'  as  the  doctors  call  it." 

"By  the  way,"  he  continued,  "every  time  I 
paddle  the  Atlantic  I  say  to  myself, '  Mark,  old 
boy,  don't  die  on  this  trip. '  For,  of  course, 
folks  have  a  foolish  notion  that  one's  bones 
must  rest  at  home.  Accordingly,  if  I  died  as 
United  States  consul  in  the  Kingdom  of  Sheba 
—if  there  be  such  a  place — Washington  would 
have  to  send  a  warship  to  fetch  my  bones 
back  to  America.  Again,  if  I  died  a  plain 
citizen  in  London,  I  would  be  shipped  back  in 
an  ordinary  liner.  But  think  of  it.  Before 
shipping  my  body,  it  would  have  to  go  into 
an  undertaker's  vault,  and  undertakers'  cellars 
are  dark  and  mildewed,  and  nasty  smelling. 
By  George,  I  wouldn't  like  to  be  in  a  cellar  for 
a  week  or  two.  And  afterwards  they  would 

93 


place  the  casket  in  the  hold  of  the  ship  with 
other  boxes,  and  the  rats  come  gnawing  about, 
and  perhaps  the  ocean  looks  in  too  and  gives 
you  a  swim.  No,  it  isn't  pleasant  to  die 
abroad.  I  want  to  die  at  home,  in  bed  and  in 
comfort. " 

At  another  time  Mark  returned  to  the 
theme,  saying: 

"Remember  my  story  about  the  body  in  the 
morgue  ?  They  couldn't  make  out  whether  the 
person  was  dead  or  merely  shamming  death, 
and  so  they  put  a  bell-rope  in  the  man's  hand, 
and  later,  when  the  man  awoke  from  his 
deathlike  sleep  and  rang  the  bell,  the  watchers 
got  so  frightened  they  ran  away,  and,  it  being 
freezing  cold,  the  man  died  a  real  death.  When 
they  next  looked  upon  him,  he  was  as  dead  as 
a  doornail.  No,  as  I  said  before,  I  want  to  die 
at  home,  without  any  bell-ropes,  or  under 
takers'  cellars,  or  rats,  or  bilge  water. " 


94 


THE  LEFT  HAND  DIDN'T  KNOW 

"I  saw  your  protege  in  Paris — he  is  getting 
along  finely  with  his  painting/'  I  told  Mark, 
meeting  him  in  the  Strand,  London. 

"  I  do  not  know  what  you  mean  by  protege, " 
he  said  evasively,  "but  I  am  glad  to  hear  that 
the  boy  is  progressing.  Do  you  know,"  he 
added  quickly,  "I  hold  with  that  famous 
English  letter-writer,  whose  name  I  forget, 
that  an  artist  has  brush  and  pencil  and  that 
the  public  will  reward  him  as  it  sees  fit. " 

Of  course,  Mark  didn't  "hold"  anything  of 
the  sort.  He  had  then  supported  that  bright 
American  boy  in  Paris  for  three  years,  giving 
him  the  best  of  teachers  and  advancing  his 
chances  in  every  way  possible,  but  he  resented 
my  touching  upon  the  subject.  I  suppose  he 
would  have  cut  me  dead  the  next  time  we  met, 
if  I  had  reminded  him  of  the  colored  boy  whom 
he  was  seeing  through  college  in  the  States. 


AMERICAN  HUMORISTS 

They  were  talking  about  humorists  in  Mr. 
Jackson's  office.  Jackson  was  the  first  secre 
tary  of  legation,  blessed  with  a  very  beautiful 
wife  and  money.  After  a  lot  of  talk,  Twain 
was  asked  for  his  opinion. 

"Well/*  he  said,  "the  greatest  American 
humorist  I  know  of  is  Mr.  Fox  of  the  '  Police 
Gazette* — the  fellow  who  put  full  evening 
dress  on  sluggers.  John  L.  Sullivan  and  some 
of  the  hard-boiled  boys  he  licked  were,  of 
course,  familiar  to  the  American  eye  in  trunks 
arid  undershirts.  Reflect  on  the  giant  mind 
that  conceived  the  original  idea  of  making 
them  look  like  Kyrle  Bellew  or  Augustin  Daly. 
Fox  with  that  picture  beat  us  Knights  of  the 
Quill  easily." 


96 


TELEPATHY  OR  SUGGESTION 

In  the  nineties  Mark  had  asked  me  to 
translate  his  yarn  on  telepathy  for  the  "  Berlin 
Boersen  Courier."  The  story  had  caught  on, 
and  the  editor  kept  bothering  for  more  of  that 
sort.  Mark  had  promised  again  and  again, 
but  nothing  came  of  it.  When  I  asked  him  for 
the  tenth  or  fifteenth  time,  he  said,  "Pshaw, 
telepathy  is  out  of  date.  I  saw  some  mental 
suggestion  done  at  Professor  Glossen's  in 
Zurich  that  knocked  spots  out  of  telepathy." 
He  asked  the  rest  of  the  company  to  listen, 
and  continued: 

"That  there  be  no  room  for  deception  of 
any  kind,  the  professor  asked  me  to  go  to  any 
drug  store  in  town  and  buy  a  bottle  of  distilled 
water.  We  scraped  the  label  off,  swathed  the 
bottle  in  linen,  and  then  buried  it  carefully  in 
a  box — a  sort  of  fireless  cooker  arrangement. 
This  was  done  before  the  students  began  to 
arrive.  When  the  lecture  room  was  good  and 
full,  the  Professor  addressed  the  boys  to  the 
effect  that  he  was  on  the  track  of  a  new  chemi 
cal,  but  that  his  discovery  was  still  far  from 
complete.  The  chemical,  he  continued,  had  a 
peculiar  odor,  heretofore  not  classified,  and 
this  morning  he  was  anxious  to  study  the  rapid 
ity  with  which  that  odor  would  diffuse  itself 
through  the  air.  Hence  he  asked  the  students 
to  give  the  utmost  attention  to  what  he  was 
doing.  Each  student  was  to  raise  his  hand 
the  moment  he  perceived  the  strange  odor. 

97 


"The  Professor  unburied  and  opened  the 
bottle,  turning  his  head  away  so  as  not  to  be 
overcome  by  the  odor,  while  I  watched  the 
proceedings  by  a  stop-watch.  The  boys  were 
all  ears — nose,  I  mean.  After  fifteen  seconds, 
most  of  the  students  in  the  first  row  were  hold 
ing  up  a  hand.  In  40  seconds  the  odor,  which 
did  not  exist,  had  traveled  to  the  rear  benches, 
and  when  we  counted  noses,  seventy-five  per 
cent  of  the  students  acknowledged  perception 
of  the  odor  and  some  even  went  so  far  as  to  be 
nauseated  by  it. " 


98 


TRYING  TO  BE  SERIOUS  DIDN'T 
WORK 

At  Brown's,  in  London,  somebody  spoke  in 
glowing  terms  of  Raymond's  portrayal  of 
Colonel  Sellers. 

"You  needn't  praise  him  for  my  sake,"  said 
Mark.  "I  did  not  write  the  part  for  an  actor 
like  him  at  all.  I  wrote  it  for  Edwin  Booth. 
That  is,  I  had  Edwin  Booth  in  mind  when  I 
did  the  play.  But  Raymond  was  the  superior 
money-maker.  He  had  the  masses  with  him — 
and  I  was  pressed  for  funds. 

"As  a  matter  of  fact,  my  Colonel  Sellers  is 
a  portrait  study — a  take-off  on  a  fine  old 
Southern  gentleman,  Colonel  Mulberry  Sellers, 
whom  I  knew  in  life.  He  had  some  funny 
traits  about  him,  but  these  never  counted  with 
me.  It  was  the  pathos  in  his  life  that  got  me. 
And  the  pathos,  relieved  by  a  few  funny 
things,  I  intended  to  put  upon  the  stage. 
Raymond  caricatured  the  part,  and  I  often 
felt  like  taking  it  away  from  him." 


99 


ASSORTED  BEAUTIES 

Of  the  Vienna  women  Mark  Twain  used  to 
say  that  they  were  so  "cussed  pretty  a  man 
walking  out  with  his  wife  feels  relieved  when 
he  meets  a  plain  one. " 

He  was  reminded  of  his  visit  to  the  Berlin 
court  and  was  asked  what  he  thought  of  the 
ladies  he  met  there. 

uThey  were  so  loaded  down  with  tiaras, 
necklaces,  and  sets  of  jewelry,  my  eyes  were 
too  dazzled  to  get  a  good  view  of  their  faces. 
I  am  sure,  though,  that  most  of  the  old  ones 
had  enormous  backs.  And  that  recalls  a  story 
that  I  heard  at  an  embassy  here,  which  I  must 
not  name.  The  ambassadors  were  talking  of 
the  beauty  of  the  women  of  their  own  country, 
and  they  all  looked  with  pity  on  the  Korean 
consular  representative,  wondering  what  he 
would  say,  but  he  was  a  spunky  chap,  and 
when  his  turn  came,  blurted  out:  'Well,  gen 
tlemen,  as  to  the  fair  sex,  there  isn't  much  to 
boast  of  in  my  country,  but  I  will  admit  that 
the  ladies  of  our  court  at  home  are  no  less  ill- 
favored  than  the  women  of  the  Berlin  Schloss, 
and  they  are  dirtier,  too/  That  postscript," 
said  Mark,  "was  the  funniest  thing  I  heard  in 
a  long  time.  He  said  it  in  a  right  hearty  and 
well-meaning  way,  too.  He  evidently  meant 
it  and  was  proud  of  it. " 


100 


MARK'S  CHILDREN  KNEW  HIM 

I  congratulated  Mark  Twain  on  the  fact 
that  he  had  been  mistaken  for  the  great 
Mommsen,  and,  throwing  out  his  chest,  he 
said: 

"I  feel  indeed  flattered  because  somebody 
thought  that  I  have  the  whole  Roman  world, 
with  Poppaea  and  Nero  and  Augustus  and  all 
the  rest,  under  my  hat,  yet,  when  I  come  to 
think  of  it,  there  is  some  difference  between 
us  two.  My  children  know  their  papa,  and  I 
know  Susan,  Clara,  and  Jean.  But  think  what 
happened  to  Mommsen  the  other  day.  He 
was  proceeding  to  a  bus  from  his  residence, 
when  an  unmannerly  wind  carried  off  his  hat. 
A  boy,  playing  in  the  street,  picked  it  up  and 
brought  it  to  the  great  man.  (By  the  way, 
never  run  after  your  own  hat — others  will  be 
delighted  to  do  it.  Why  spoil  their  fun?) 

*  Thank  you/  said  Mommsen.  'I  never 
could  have  recovered  the  hat  myself/  He 
looked  the  boy  over  carefully,  and  added: 

'And  a  nice  little  boy.  Do  you  live  in  the 
neighborhood?  Whose  little  boy  are  you?' 

'Why/  said  the  kid,  'mamma  says  I  am 
Professor  Mommsen's  little  boy,  but  I  never 
see  him.  He  is  always  among  the  Romans, 
writing  in  a  book. ' 

"  'Bless  your  heart,  little  man/  said 
Mommsen.  'To-night  I  will  surely  be  home 
early;  tell  your  mamma,  and  ask  her  to  intro 
duce  you  and  the  other  children  properly. ' 


10 1 


MARK,  DOGS,  DAGOES,  AND  CATS 

Mark  never  tired  telling  of  the  Italian  liter 
ary  shark  who  unsuccessfully  tried  to  black 
mail  him  out  of  twenty  francs. 

"He  had  a  peculiar  grievance,  that  Dago/* 
said  Mark.  "He  vocalized  to  the  effect 
that  he  had  done  me  the  honor  to  call  four 
times  at  my  villa  and  that,  just  as  often,  he 
came  near  losing  the  seat  of  his  pants  by  the 
actions  of  my  degraded  dogs,who  drove  him  off. 
Hence,  he  calculated  that  I  owed  him  at  least 
five  francs  per  visit,  on  account  of  his  trouble 
and  the  anxiety  he  suffered.  But  as  I  kept  no 
dogs,  neither  degraded  nor  otherwise,  my  dogs 
couldn't  have  worried  the  man.  And  he 
wasn't  on  my  visiting  list  anyhow." 

"Somewhere,"  continued  Mark,  "I  put  on 
record  that  I  know  the  business  end  of  a  horse 
very  well,  but  I  never  bothered  enough  about 
dogs  to  make  sure  of  their  anatomy.  Pussy 
is  the  animal  for  me.  You  remember  my 
adventures  in  Koernerstrasse  No.  7,  Berlin. 
The  women  took  that  apartment  in  Slumland 
over  my  head,  and  lured  me  to  approve  of 
their  choice  by  having  two  purring  cats  on  the 
hearth,  when  I  first  saw  the  place.  I  simply 
can't  resist  a  cat,  particularly  a  purring  one. 
They  are  the  cleanest,  cunningest,  and  most 
intelligent  things  I  know,  outside  of  the  girl 
you  love,  of  course. " 


102 


THE  TRAGEDY  OF  GENIUS 

On  October  13,  1891,  Mark  Twain  and  I 
went  together  to  the  Berlin  University  to  see 
the  great  Virchow  lionized  and  almost  deified 
by  his  fellow  professors  and  by  the  students. 
Mark  was  much  impressed  and  promised  to 
give  Virchow  a  good  send-off  in  his  corre 
spondence.  And  on  the  way  home  he  waxed 
almost  sentimental,  saying:  "Virchow  is 
seventy  years  old.  In  a  little  while  he  will 
either  be  dead  or  that  great  intellect  of  his 
will  begin  to  deteriorate,  and  what  a  pity  that 
would  be! 

"There  was  Emerson,  who  valued  impres 
sions  and  ideas  above  everything — in  his  way 
as  great  a  man  as  Virchow  and  certainly  a 
great  benefactor  of  his  countrymen.  But 
Holmes  told  me  that  in  the  late  seventies  of 
his  long  life,  facts  counted  no  longer  with 
Emerson,  for  his  memory  was  gone.  At  Long 
fellow's  funeral,  which  preceded  his  own  by  a 
few  months  only,  Emerson  walked  up  to  the 
coffin  twice,  probably  forgetting  the  second 
time  that  he  had  already  gazed  upon  his  late 
friend's  face.  When  he  had  taken  this  last 
farewell,  he  came  back  to  his  seat  and  said  to 
to  the  person  nearest  to  him: 

"  'That  dead  man  was  a  sweet  and  beauti 
ful  soul,  but  I  have  completely  forgotten  his 
name. ' 

"For  myself,"  concluded  Twain,  "I  have 
forgotten  many  a  thing,  but  I  will  never  forget 

103 


that  little  speech  of  poor  old  Emerson.  Sic 
transit  gloria  mundl — such  is  the  way  of  the 
world,  a  free  translation,  I  know,  but  highly 
applicable. " 


104 


KILTIES  AND  THE  LASSIE 

"  I  heard  a  good  one  on  a  young  Scotchman, 
a  fellow  who  was  always  trying  to  show  off  in 
kilties.  By  the  way,  Andy  Carnegie  told  me 
about  him.  This  young  Scot,  with  some  other 
chaps,  went  on  a  tramp  of  the  lakes  of  Scot 
land,  and  young  Douglas  had  a  good  time 
showing  off  his  fine  calves — talked  about  them 
and  made  comparisons  with  other  well-known 
legs,  of  actresses,  bishops,  dancers,  etc.  (In 
England  all  bishops  wear  knickers,  you  know.) 

"At  night  the  boys  put  up  at  a  rather  dilap 
idated  inn,  neither  clean  nor  promising  other 
creature  comforts.  But  the  girl  who  waited 
on  them,  maid  or  scullion,  was  a  dandy- 
blonde  and  blue-eyed,  rosy-cheeked  and  sturdy 
of  arm  and  leg. 

"As  she  flitted  in  and  out  of  the  room, 
bringing  whiskey  and  water,  cheese,  bread  and 
dried  fish — that  was  all  the  bill  of  fare  afforded 
— the  travelers'  eyes  followed  her,  and  when 
she  left  the  room  there  was  many  a  knowing 
wink.  Douglas  got  jealous  of  the  attention 
bestowed  on  Miriam. 

"  'What  is  there  to  go  daft  over?'  he  de 
manded  peevishly. 

"  'Well/  said  they  in  chorus,  'for  one  thing, 
she  has  better  legs  than  you,  Douglas. ' 

"Douglas  hotly  denied  the  imputation.  There 
was  an  argument,  and  it  was  finally  agreed 
that  the  two  be  measured.  If  Douglas  lost, 
he  must  pay  for  the  night's  reckoning. 

105 


"Accordingly,  Douglas  was  put  to  the  tape, 
and  the  girl  also.  Miriam  had  a  few  more 
inches  of  calf,  but  the  Scotchman  was  un 
daunted.  'Have  you  ever  seen  finer  thighs 
than  mine?'  he  boasted. 

'The  lad  who  had  been  doing  the  measuring 
got  flustered,  but  the  girl  laughed: 

"  'Don't  be  afeerd,  Laddie;  the  higher  you 
go  the  bigger  they  grow.  I'll  be  the  winner/ 

"And  she  was,"  said  Mark,  with  a  chuckle 
of  evident  approval. 


106 


A  WISE  PROVISION  OF  PROVIDENCE 

From  a  window  at  the  Hotel  de  Rome, 
Mark  and  friends  were  "reviewing"  the 
ceremonial  entry  of  the  King  of  Italy  in  Berlin. 

"  Fine  horse-flesh, "  Mark  kept  saying,  "  and 
the  gee-gees  look  better  fed  and  happier  than 
all  that  bedizened  and  beribboned  royalty." 

"  What's  that  string  of  riders  following  the 
' four-poster'  "  (Mark's  description  of  a  state 
coach),  "tied  to  the  twelve  horses?  They 
seem  to  sport  every  conceivable  uniform, 
Horse,  Foot,  and  Artillery!" 

"Those  are  the  German  kings  and  kinglets," 
it  was  explained. 

"Let's  count  them,"  said  Mark. 

They  counted  some  twenty  crowned  heads, 
"young,  old,  and  mouse-colored,"  said  our 
friend,  as  he  retired  from  the  window  and 
attacked  the  coffee  and  cake.  He  sat  musing 
for  a  while,  but  when  somebody  suggested 
"billiards,"  he  became  alert  as  usual. 

"  I  have  been  thinking, "  he  said — "  thinking 
of  wise  Providence.  Just  fancy  that  Provi 
dence  had  run  the  Equator  through  Europe, 
instead  of  through  the  Pacific,  or  wherever  it 
is  now.  If  the  Equator  happened  to  be  located 
in  the  Old  World,  each  of  the  kings  we  have 
seen,  and  more  to  be  heard  from,  would  be 
itching  and  grabbing  for  it,  pouring  out  their 
subjects'  blood  like  water  (saving  their  own, 
of  course)  to  get  hold  of  the  blamed  thing. 
I  would  make  them  sit  on  it.  Hot  dogs. " 

107 


THE  AWFUL  GERMAN  LANGUAGE 

In  the  Berlin  of  1891,  street-car  conductors 
gave  you  a  ticket  for  every  mile  traveled, 
and  you  were  expected  to  keep  all  these  tickets 
or  slips  of  paper  in  apple-pie  order  to  show  to  an 
inspector  who  might,  or  might  not,  come 
around.  Mark  regularly  threw  his  on  the 
floor,  and  dropped  cigar  ashes  on  them. 
Accordingly,  he  had  to  pay  double  fare  every 
little  while,  and  was  abused  into  the  bargain. 

One  afternoon,  going  to  the  Legation,  we 
got  into  an  old,  rather  narrow  bus,  and  oppo 
site  Mark  sat  a  woman  with  an  enormous 
bosom. 

"What  do  you  bet  she  takes  No.  52  cor 
sets  ? "  he  whispered.  "  She  grew  that  as  a  shelf 
for  her  bus  tickets,"  he  continued.  "If  I  had 
a  * chester'  like  that,  I  could  save  money." 

After  a  pause,  he  turned  suddenly  on  me: 

"What  is  bust  in  German?" 

"Busen,"  I  translated. 

"Male,  female,  or  neuter?" 

"Male— derBusen." 

He  began  slapping  his  knees  with  both 
hands,  waggled  his  head  from  one  side  to  the 
other,  and  laughed  till  the  tears  ran  down  his 
cheeks.  But  he  never  said  another  word  on 
that  trip. 

Two  months  later  the  lecture,  "The  Awful 
German  Tongue,  "was  delivered.  But  at  the 

108 


embassy  we  knew  it  almost  by  heart  before 
he  came  out  with  it,  for  he  was  forever  talking 
genitive  case,  declinations,  definite  and  indefi 
nite  articles,  and  male,  female,  or  neuter. 


109 


ARTIST  OR  PHOTOGRAPHER 

Mr.  Clemens  had  met  Lenbach,  the  eminent 
German  painter,  in  Vienna,  and  when,  a  year 
or  two  afterwards,  I  ran  across  Mark  in 
Munich,  he  proposed  that  we  call  at  Lenbach's 
studio.  So  to  Akademie  Strasse  we  went,  and 
duly  admired  Lenbach's  collections.  "Mostly 
painted  kaisers,  kings,  and  kinglets,  also  one 
man,  W.  K.  Vanderbilt,"  was  Mark's  esti 
mate.  I  saw  Lenbach  eye  Clemens  with  busi 
ness  in  his  heart.  Mark  saw  it  too.  "Wonder 
if  he  intends  to  throw  me  on  the  linen,  I  mean 
the  canvas,"  he  whispered,  while  Lenbach 
was  busy  in  another  part  of  the  shop. 

"It  would  increase  his  popularity  im 
mensely,"  I  sotto  voce'ed  back. 

Lenbach  returned — with  a  camera,  and  as 
Mark  looked  puzzled,  Lenbach  explained: 
"  I  always  get  every  possible  angle  I  can  of  the 
persons  I  want  to  paint.  Now,  if  you  will 
just  stand  still,  Mr.  Clemens,  for  a  little  while, 
I  will  be  ever  so  much  obliged." 

And  Lenbach  made  the  rounds  of  Clemens, 
who  had  taken  off  his  overcoat,  more  than 
once,  photographing  every  important  bit  of 
anatomy,  back,  sides,  front,  arms,  legs,  ear, 
full  face,  back  of  head,  cheeks,  hands,  eyes, 
etc. 

"They  told  me  in  Vienna  that  Lenbach  was 
an  artist,"  commented  Mark  when  we  gained 
the  sidewalk.  "As  you  saw,  he  is  merely  a 


no 


photographer.     Glad  I  never  went  to  pieces 
over  his  art  with  a  capital  A." 

Whether  the  painting  was  ever  undertaken 
by  Lenbach  I  don't  know,  but  it  would  be 
immensely  interesting  to  get  those  plates  from 
the  "photographer's"  studio. 


in 


MARK   INTERVIEWED  THE   BARBER 
ABOUT  HARRY  THAW 

During  his  last  visit  to  London,  Mark  called 
me  up  one  morning  and  said:  "My  arm  aches 
and  I  can't  do  it  myself,  so  for  God's  sake, 
take  me  to  a  barber  who  can  scrape  one's  face 
without  taking  half  the  hide  off.  I  am  getting 
mighty  tired  of  being  flayed  alive  in  this  here 
burg." 

Accordingly  we  drove  down  to  the  Cecil  in 
the  Strand. 

"I  understand  you  are  the  man  who  treats 
a  delicate  skin  like  an  American  beauty  rose," 
said  Mark  to  the  barber. 

"I  will  treat  yours,  Mr.  Clemens,  as  if  it 
were  a  butterfly.  For  I  have  read  what  you 
have  said  about  Italian  barbers,"  was  an 
swered.  And  the  things  that  happened  to 
Mark's  face,  head,  hands  and  feet  while  in  the 
chair  would  fill  a  column  of  "The  Times"  to 
enumerate.  He  remained  two  hours  in  the 
chair,  and  was  not  allowed  to  pay  a  red  penny 
for  the  accommodation. 

Later,  at  a  well-known  grillroom,  we  saw 
the  massage  artist  alone  at  a  table,  and  seated 
ourselves  at  the  same  board.  The  barber 
talked  about  other  American  celebrities  and 
notorieties  he  had  treated  and  mentioned 
Thaw. 

"Oh,  you  shaved  Harry — tell  me  about  it," 
said  Mark. 

When  the  barber  had  finished,  Mark  in- 

112 


sisted,  looking  fiercely  at  me:  "Not  a  word 
of  this  in  New  York,  or  there  will  be  another 
dozen  Thaw  trials/* 

As  Harry  Thaw  is  now  disposed  of,  tempo 
rarily,  at  least,  it  won't  do  any  harm  to  print 
Mark's  interview  with  the  barber. 

It  seems  that  Harry  and  Evelyn  occupied 
a  suite  at  the  Cecil  before  they  made  that 
notorious  exhibition  of  themselves  in  New 
York.  Harry  was  an  early  riser  and  Evelyn 
was  not,  and  when  the  barber  called  at  eight, 
as  ordered,  Evelyn  either  had  to  be  put  out  of 
bed  forcibly  by  Harry  or  remained  under  the 
covers  (for  a  time  at  least). 

"And  could  you  do  your  barbering  and 
currycombing  with  that  pretty  thing  within 
arm's  length?"  asked  Mark. 

"I  had  to,"  said  the  barber.  "I  was  paid 
for  it;  besides,  there  was  a  terrible  horsewhip 
on  the  bed  and  a  revolver  in  an  open  drawer. 

"Harry  insisted  upon  smoking  while  I 
wielded  the  razor,  and  I  had  the  greatest 
difficulty  in  the  world  not  to  cut  him.  He  also 
insisted  upon  quarreling  with  Evelyn  or  laud 
ing  her  beauty  while  my  knife  played  around 
his  mouth.  This  sort  of  thing  went  on  for  a 
week  or  more,  when  one  fine  morning  I  saw 
that  Harry  had  rigged  up  a  shooting  stand  in 
the  hall  of  the  apartment. 

'  'Close  the  door/  he  cried,  'and  pull  the 
curtains  across.  I  don't  want  the  servants  to 
hear.'  Then  he  began  firing  at  the  target. 
Evelyn  had  been  asleep,  and  hearing  shots, 


jumped  out  of  bed  and  began  crying:  'My 
God!'  and  'Mamma;'  likewise  promised 
'never  to  do  it  again.' 

"Never  to  do  what  again?"  asked  Mark. 

"I  don't  know,  sir." 

"  But  you  were  right  next  to  her;  why  didn't 
you  ask  her?"  insisted  Mark. 

"But  it  was  her  private  business,"  said  the 
barber. 

"Sure  it  was,  but  that  was  so  much  more 
reason  for  worming  it  out  of  her.  You  are  a 
good  barber,  but  a  h of  a  reporter." 

"Of  course,  the  floor  attendants  came  troop 
ing  to  Thaw's  door  and  the  house  telephone 
and  speaking  tubes  emitted  a  volley  of  ques 
tions. 

"Harry  was  prepared  to  give  an  impertinent 
though  truthful  answer.  But  Evelyn  took 
the  phone  in  hand  and  swore  that  it  was  an 
accident,  due  to  her  carelessness — Harry  had 
nothing  to  do  with  it,  and  she  was  going  to 
apologize  to  the  management.  When  things 
had  quieted  down,  Thaw  told  me  on  the  d.  q. 
that  he  would  transfer  his  revolver  practice 
to  a  certain  shooting  gallery.  'I  want  to  be 
an  A  No.  I  shot  when  I  return  to  New  York, ' 
he  said.  'There  is  a  fellow  who  has  deeply 
wronged  my  girl  and  I  am  going  to  have  it  out 
with  him.'  " 


114 


HIS  PORTRAIT— A  MIRROR 

"People  wonder  why  I  spend  so  much  time 
abroad/'  said  Mark  Twain  at  a  little  luncheon 
party  in  Vienna,  where  young  wine,  fresh  from 
the  vat,  circulated  freely.  "  One  of  the  reasons 
is  that  I  have  no  doubles  in  foreign  countries, 
while  in  the  States  I  had  notice  served  on  me 
twice  a  month  on  the  average  that  I  look 
exactly  like  Mr.  Cobbler  Smith  or  Mr.  Brick 
layer  Brown.  I  was  told  they  had  the  very 
same  warts,  in  the  very  same  places,  where  I 
sport  them — accuracy  or  imagination,  which  ? 
The  day  before  I  left  New  York  I  got  a  letter 
of  that  sort  and,  having  booked  passage  and 
nothing  to  fear,  I  made  bold  to  answer  it. 

"  'My  dear  Sir/  I  wrote.  'I  was  so  much 
impressed  by  the  resemblance  that  I  bear  your 
face,  feet,  hands,  mustache,  eyelids,  ears, 
hair,  eyes,  eyebrows,  cheeks,  and  other  things, 
that  I  had  the  portrait  of  yourself  you  so 
kindly  enclosed  framed,  and  hereafter  I  shall 
use  it  in  place  of  a  mirror  when  I  shave. ' 

"Wife  never  saw  that  letter/'  added  Mark. 
"She  was  packing." 


MARK,  BISMARCK,  LINCOLN,  AND 
DARWIN 

I  had  been  to  see  Bismarck  to  help  boom 
Bryan  for  the  Presidency,  when  that  gentle 
man  happened  to  get  defeated  for  the  Senate. 

"And  is  old  Bismarck  still  reading  those 
trashy  French  novels?"  inquired  Mark. 

"Much  worse,"  I  said. 

"Started  Paul  de  Kock  over  again?" 

"Worse  still.     He  is  reading  Mark  Twain 


now.' 


'You  don't  say.    Since  when  the  reform?" 

"Since  his  daughter-in-law,  Herbert's  wife, 
the  little  Countess  Hoyos,  gave  him  a  set  for 
Christmas. " 

"Hoyos,  Hoyos.  I  met  some  people  of  that 
name  in  Italy." 

"Your  fair  patroness  hails  from  Trieste,  or 
neighborhood." 

"How  do  you  know  that  Bismarck  not  only 
owns,  but  reads,  my  books?"  demanded  Mark. 

"Because  he  asked  me  whether  there  are 
still  steamer  loads  of  Yankees  going  picnicking 
in  Palestine  with  Mark  Twain  for  a  bear 
leader.  The  old  Prince  told  me  he  read 
'  Innocents  Abroad '  twice,  and  memorized  the 
best  things  in  it  to  relate  to  his  grandchildren. " 

"Quite  a  compliment — I  do  wish  Bismarck 
hadn't  been  such  a  rascal— in  politics,  I  mean 
— for  in  private  life  he  was  quite  a  gentleman, 
I  understand.  And  it  is  to  laugh  how,  relying 
on  that,  de  Blowitz  worked  the  greatest  of 

116 


scoops  during  the  Berlin  Congress.  Namely, 
about  that  world-moving  affair  the  'London 
Times'  for  weeks  could  get  no  more  or  better 
news  than,  mayhap,  the  Brighton  Enterprise. 
Finally  de  Blowitz,  the  Thunderer's  interna 
tional  representative,  lit  upon  a  fourth-rate 
secretary  in  the  German  foreign  office,  who 
had  an  exceedingly  broad  appetite  and  a  cor 
respondingly  narrow  pocketbook.  De  Blowitz 
offered  to  pay  for  the  secretary's  luncheons, 
provided  the  young  gentleman  would  exchange 
hats  with  him  daily,  the  Berliner's  chapeau 
concealing  certain  notes  about  goings  on  at 
the  foreign  office  under  the  hat  band.  Agreed ! 
By  this  ruse  de  Blowitz  gathered  the  whole 
Berlin  treaty  piecemeal  and  was  able  to  cable 
it  from  Brussels  to  London  even  before  that 
famous  document  was  read  in  the  Congress." 

Mark  continued:  "If  Bismarck  had  been 
the  ordinary  small-minded  statesman,  he 
would  have  got  on  to  de  Blowitz's  game  before 
it  was  half  finished,  but  being  a  gentleman,  he 
saw  nothing  out  of  the  way  in  the  association 
of  'The  Times'  correspondent  with  one  of  his 
secretaries." 

Mark  was  genuinely  proud  of  Bismarck's 
partiality  for  his  books,  even  if  it  came  late 
in  the  day. 

"Do  you  know,"  he  once  said,  "that  I  gave 
Charles  Darwin  the  strength  to  write  some  of 
his  most  famous  and  epoch-making  volumes? 
How?  I  am  told  that,  when  the  great  scientist 
was  utterly  fagged  out  with  study,  investiga- 

117 


tion,  and  with  the  manifold  experiments  he 
was  carrying  on,  he  would  read  my  *  Innocents ' 
or  'Torn  Sawyer'  or,  maybe  a  Harper  Maga 
zine  story,  for  a  half  hour  or  an  hour.  Then 
he  would  go  to  work  again  and  later  was  ready 
for  bed.  Only  when  this  here  Mark  Twain 
had  lulled  his  nerves  into  proper  condition, 
Darwin  wooed  sleep,  I  am  told,  but  I  can't 
vouch  for  the  truth  of  this  story. " 

On  another  occasion  Mark  said:  "I  was 
born  too  late  to  help  ease  Lincoln's  hours  of 
worry.  Ward  Hill  Lamon,  whom  we  met  in 
Berlin,  told  me  more  than  once  that  Lincoln 
would  have  been  a  constant  reader  of  my 
'literature*  if  he  had  lived  long  enough  to 
enjoy  my  books,  and  none  knew  Lincoln 
better  than  Lamon. 

"And  when  my  girls  admonish  me  to  behave 
in  company,  it  always  recalls  the  stories 
Lamon  told  me  about  old  Abe's  awkwardness. 

"When  Abe  and  he  were  riding  circuit  in 
Illinois,  they  carried  their  office  in  their  hats, 
and  Abe  contracted  the  habit  of  pulling  off  his 
hat  from  the  back  so  as  not  to  spill  any  papers. 
That  was  all  right  on  the  circuit,  but  in  the 
White  House  it  looked  undignified.  So  Mrs. 
Lincoln  asked  Lamon,  a  most  courtly  gentle 
man,  to  remonstrate  with  the  President  and 
teach  him  to  take  off  his  hat  'decently.' 
'  Decently '  was  the  word  she  used,  said  Lamon. 
He  continued: 

'I  did  my  best  during  a  night's  smoker, 
Mr.  Seward  helping  me,  and  the  President 

118 


proved  a  good  enough  scholar  for  any  high- 
school  of  courtesy.  Eight  or  ten  times  he 
took  off  his  hat  properly,  without  a  reminder 
of  any  sort.  Then,  at  the  good-night,  I  tried 
him  again.  "Let's  do  it  in  the  right  courtly 
fashion,"  I  said,  doffing  my  chapeau  like  the 
Count  of  Monte  Cristo. 

4  Here  goes/  said  the  President,  reached 
his  right  hand  back,  and  pulled  off  his  stove 
pipe  in  the  old  Illinois  circuit  style/ 

"You  see,"  concluded  Mark,  "it  was  no  use 
trying  to  make  a  courtier  of  Lincoln.  The 
same  here." 


119 


MARK  AT  THE    STOCK    EXCHANGE, 

VIENNA 

A  day  or  two  after  I  sent  Clemens  my  trans 
lation  of  Field  Marshal  Count  Moltke's 
Letters,  he  called  at  my  hotel  in  the  forenoon 
and  proposed  that  we  walk  to  the  stock  ex 
change.  The  stock  exchange,  as  usual,  was 
swarming  with  gentlemen  of  the  Jewish  per 
suasion,  and  Mark  asked  me  to  pay  particular 
attention  to  them. 

uThey  are  the  smartest  of  the  lot  here,"  he 
insisted,  "  and  so  is  a  Jewish  peddler  smarter 
than  a  Christian  house-owner — I  mean  the 
average.  I  say  it  again;  the  Jews  are  the 
greatest  people  let  loose. 

"According  to  Moltke's  essay  in  the  Letters 
you  sent  me,  the  Jews  ate  up  Poland.  Very 
well,  the  storks  eat  up  frogs.  Do  we  blame  the 
storks?" 


120 


MARK  AND  THE  PRUSSIAN 
LIEUTENANT 

Mark  liked  to  be  taken  around  to  real  Ger 
man  places,  and  one  day  I  escorted  him  to  a 
Weinstube  Unter  den  Linden,  which  had  quite 
a  reputation  for  liquid  and  other  refreshments. 
The  room  we  entered  was  full  of  lunchers;  we 
sat  down  at  a  small  side  table  that  afforded  a 
good  look  around.  About  fifteen  feet  ahead 
of  us  was  a  pier  glass  on  the  wall  between  two 
windows,  and  in  front  of  it  a  table  where  an 
old  man  with  his  frau  were  eating  the  national 
dish  with  sausage  trimmings.  The  old  folks 
were  enjoying  themselves  heartily,  and,  as 
Mark  put  it,  "they  ate  so  you  can  hear  them 
a  mile  off,  like  Chicago  millionaires." 

Presently,  a  young  lieutenant  strode  in, 
sword  trailing,  spurs  jingling. 

"Look  at  that/'  said  Mark.  "All  the 
stupidity  and  maliciousness  of  his  ancestors, 
male  and  female,  for  two  hundred  years  back, 
is  mirrored  in  his  face." 

The  junior  war  lord  stalked  up  the  centre 
aisle,  gave  his  cap  to  a  bowing  waiter,  and 
stood  up  in  front  of  the  pier  glass.  Then  he 
pulled  a  comb  out  of  one  pocket  and  a  brush 
out  of  another,  and  began  "  currycombing 
himself,"  as  Mark  expressed  it.  Parting  his 
hair  all  the  way  down  to  the  neck,  he  brushed 
it  sideways  both  ends — over  the  old  people's 
sauerkraut  and  sausages.  Mark  kicked  at  me 

121 


under  the  table  and  called  me  names  for  not 
going  and  knocking  the  fellow  down. 

"Don't  you  see,  he's  peppering  those  peo 
ple's  dinner  with  his  dandruff,"  he  said.  Be 
a  sport  and  go  and  kick  him  well,  young 
fellow." 

But  I  knew  better.  The  lieutenant  would 
have  spitted  me  on  the  end  of  his  sword  before 
I  could  say  Jack  Robinson. 

Gradually  Mark's  wrath  melted  away  and 
he  saw  only  the  funny  side  of  the  affair.  When 
the  lieutenant  had  taken  his  seat  at  the  table, 
he  put  one  knee  over  the  other  and  ordered  his 
pea  soup  on  the  rough — that  is,  with  the  husks 
intact. 

"Husks  are  filling,  you  know,"  said  Mark, 
"or  perhaps  his  stomach  is  full  of  chickens. 
Chicks  like  husks;  that  lieutenant  is  human, 
after  all." 

I  thought  we  had  seen  enough  and  I  en 
couraged  him  to  go  home. 

"Oh,  no,"  he  said.  "I  am  going  to  see  this 
circus  to  the  end.  Presently  that  old  woman 
will  vomit  when  one  of  the  lieutenant's  bristles 
tickles  her  funny  bone,  and  then  she  will  spew 
all.  over  his  boots  and  pants.  I  am  waiting  for 
that." 


122 


MARK  STUDIES  THE  COSTERMONGER 
LANGUAGE 

"Funny  that  we  never  took  to  asses  in  New 
York  and  other  parts  of  the  States/'  said 
Mark  one  afternoon  as  we  were  passing 
through  Soho,  London.  He  was  watching  the 
little  costermonger  carts  traveling  to  and  fro 
with  considerable  speed,  taking  into  account 
the  petty  draft  animals,  the  heavy  loads  and 
the  boy  or  girl  perched  on  top. 

"The  donkeys  seem  well  fed,"  mused 
Clemens  a  block  or  two  further  on,  "but  I 
don't  like  a  whip  in  the  driver's  hand.  Hear 
that,"  he  cried  indignantly,  "the  rude  way 
that  corduroy-panted  chap  is  talking  to  his 
meek  donkey.  Let's  listen  some  more.  It's  a 


scream. ' 


After  the  cart  had  driven  away,  Clemens 
said:  "The  patter  of  the  costermonger,  when 
you  come  to  think  of  it,  is  really  a  language 
within  the  English  language,  and  one  might 
do  worse  than  give  it  printed  tongue — i.e.y 
raise  it  above  the  merely  occasional  use  British 
writers  accord  it.  I  want  to  look  into  that 
costermongery,"  he  continued.  "See  if  you 
can't  find,  hire  or  steal  some  coster  chap  worth 
listening  to,  some  one  who  knows  the  patter 
with  all  the  trimmings."  And  at  his  door  he 
added:  "Get  an  'Arriet,'  for  the  'Arry's'  are 
too  tough." 

A  week  or  two  later  Herbert  Beerbohm  Tree 
found  us  such  a  patter  artist  among  the  em- 

123 


ployees  of  Her  Majesty's  Theatre — a  scrub 
lady — and  here  follow  some  of  the  stories  she 
told  us,  corrected  and  amended  by  Mark, 
who  cut  out  coster  words  not  generally  under 
stood. 


124 


MARK    AND    THE    COSTERMONGERS 

That  Beautiful  Funeral 
Two  Girls  Meeting  at  the  Corner  of  a  Street. 

"Hullo,  I  didn't  know  you  had  moved  up 
this  way  again.  Who  are  you  in  black  for?" 

"  Stepfather.  Thank  Gowd !  he  was  a  reg'lar 
log  on  the  fambly's  leg.  Kept  a-ebbing  and 
a-flowing  and  wouldn't  die.  But  you  know 
when  we  moved  to  'Ampsted,  that  settled  him. 
Those  flu  winds  it  was  as  took  'im  off. 

"We  'ad  a  postmortem  and  everything  on 
'im,  and  when  they  opened  'im  you  know 
they  found  he  had  two  ulsters  in  his  inside  and 
there  was  'aricot  veins  in  his  legs  too.  But  it 
was  the  influential  winds  that  took  'im  off, 
real. 

"Of  course  Mother  'ad  'im  insured  in  all 
sorts  of  places.  So,  poor  man,  he  real  paid  for 
all  this  beautiful  mourning  we  are  having  on 
him.  We  all  dress  alike  in  this  beautiful  black. 

"On  the  funeral  day  we  had  all  our  cousins 
up  from  up-country  and  we  had  such  a  beauti 
ful  funeral  and  such  a  swell  party  atter.  We 
had  a  hotch-bone  of  beef  and  blanmanges  and 
jellies  and  cakes  and  tarts,  and  by  Gowd!  we 
did  enjoy  ourselves. 

"Good-by,  Maisie,  see  you  another  day, 
for  my  missus  isn't  a  disagreeable  old  cat  like 
most  of  'em.  That's  why  I  'ave  this  bit  of  talk 
with  you.  But  I  means  to  better  myself  soon 
as  I  can." 

125 


MARK    AND    THE    COSTERMONGERS 

Ada's  Beast  of  a  Man 

"Well,  m'am,  I  feels  all  over  alike.  That 
beast  of  a  'usband  of  my  pretty  pet  of  a  Ada  he 
wouldn't  let  her  have  a  van  to  move  in  when 
she  had  all  that  sweep  of  furniture  that  he 
bought  for  her  at  the  market  for  five  pounds 
($25)  and  her  chest  of  drawsers  besides. 
Real,  I  don't  feel  as  if  I  could  eat  a  bit,  I 
don't. 

"She  had  to  get  a  barrow,  Ada  had,  and  a 
wheel  came  hoff  and  the  pretty  pet  had  to 
hold  it  up  with  the  long  broom  while  the  man 
was  a-pushing  of  it.  But  I  will  say,  she  has 
improved  her  rooms  in  moving. 

"But  it  didn't  look  at  all  like  a  man  of  his 
standing,  the  governor  of  a  coal  cart.  And 
you  can  imagine  what  the  neighbors  said, 
seeing  the  moving  on  the  barrow  and  my 
pretty  pet  holding  of  it  up. 

"But  I  must  say  she  got  blinds,  they  are 
those  Verinkers  (Venetians)  you  'card  of. 
Sure  he  is  a  beast,  my  pretty  pet's  man.  He 
wouldn't  even  put  up  the  indecent  lights  for 
her,  and  she  had  to  pay  a  man  tuppence  to  do 
it  for  her  while  she  was  still  a-trembling  from 
holding  up  the  barrow  and  that  after  paying 
tuppence  halfpenny  for  the  indecent  lights." 


126 


MARK    AND    THE    COSTERMONGERS 

Jealousy  in  Lowland 
(Overheard  near  Billingsgate  Market.) 

"Hullo,  how  you  gettin'  on  and  how's  your 
old  man?" 

"See  'ere,  you  remembers  'ow  I  looked 
atter  'im  when  he  was  that  damn*  ill  and  all  the 
nourishments  I  got  'im.  Well  'e  got  that 
strong  again  but  'e  wouldn't  go  to  work.  So 
I  says  to  'im  yesterday  mornin'  w'en  'e  was 
a-sittin'  over  the  fire  smokin'  his  dirty  pipe, 
'Ain't  you  ever  to  go  work  no  more?' 

"What  d'you  think  'e  says? 

'  'Ere,'  he  says,  'I  'ave  bin  a-thinkin'. 
Where  did  you  get  all  dese  'ere  nourishments 
from  while  I  was  sick?  I  do  believe  you  had 
a  boy.  'Ho  is  the  man?  I'll  knock  'is  damn' 
block  off.' 

"Now  remember,  maid,  'e  never  said  a  word 
while  'e  was  gettin'  the  nourishment  down  'is 
gut,  the  beast,  but  afterwards  'e  says  dis  'ere 
to  me.  'Ere's  a  beast  for  yer,  girl." 

Lady  No.  2 — "  'Ere  'e's  a-comin'  along  the 
corner.  Let's  scoot,  maidie.  'E  doesn't  look 
good-natured  at  all,  at  all,  this  mornin'." 


127 


MARK    AND    THE    COSTERMONGERS 

The  Troubles  of  Liz 

Liz,  the  maid-of-all-work,  has  overstayed 
her  furlough,  and  is  very  emphatic,  putting 
the  blame  on  Kate. 

"Oh,  I  won't  go  out  with  that  there  Kate 
no  more,  m'am.  That  Kate  do  know  a  lot  of 
fast  chaps.  She  interdooced  me  to  one  and 
he  kept  a-cuddlin'  of  me  round  the  neck  and 
near  pushed  my  hat  off,  you  see  it's  all  awry. 
And  he  kept  a-pinching  of  me  about  and 
arsked  if  it  was  all  my  own  figger.  But  he  did 
say  Dear  to  me/' 

Liz's  next  place  was  with  a  butcher's,  but 
there  they  "were  real  rude"  to  her,  and  she 
left,  of  course.  This  is  her  report  of  what 
happened: 

"  'Here,  Liz,'  said  one  of  the  helpers  to  me, 
'  there's  two  kidneys  for  my  tea.  Take  a  care, 
you  got  two  like  that.'  Oh,  I  can't  stay  in  a 
place  where  they  talk  as  fast  as  that,  just  as 
if  I  had  kidneys  like  a  cow. 

"And  the  other  chap  comes  and  brings  me  a 
bit  of  liver  to  cook  for  his  tea,  and  he  says: 
'Liz,  you  know  you've  got  a  liver  just  like 
that?'  I  just  ran  upstairs  and  told  the  missus. 
And  in  the  evening  one  brings  me  a  pig's  head 
with  a  squint  in  his  eye  and  he  says,  'Liz,  this 
is  what  you  do  to  the  boys — give  'em  the  glad 
eye.'  No,  I  won't  stop,  as  true  as  there  is 
Gowds  in  'eaven." 

128 


Her  next  place  was  with  a  benevolent  old 
spinster.  Liz  left  her  service,  saying:  "  I  had 
no  wages,  and  what  do  you  think  she  did? 
Why,  she  has  locked  up  the  tarts.  And  the 
other  day  I  was  making  myself  a  bit  of  toast 
and  margarine  and  the  old  cat  caught  me  at 
it  and  she  said,  'Isn't  dripping  not  good 
enough  for  you,  Liz?'  " 


129 


THE  FRENCH  MADAME 

One  night  in  his  dressing-room,  Sir  Herbert 
Tree  introduced  us  to  another  promising  story 
teller,  namely,  the  French  madame  who  looked 
after  "the  ladies  of  the  chorus,  who  raise  a 
shapely  leg  before  us."  (That  was  a  popular 
sing-song  then  and  Mark  heartily  enjoyed 
it.)  She  told  Clemens  of  a  stroke  of  good 
luck  that  had  befallen  her  and  he  declared 
himself  tickled  to  death  with  her  French- 
English,  which,  he  said,  was  every  bit  as  good 
as  his  own  English-French.  Tree  kindly  lent 
us  "Basil,"  his  stenographer  and  "memory," 
to  jot  down  the  yarn. 

"Louisa,  Be  Brave" 

At  Madame  Raymond's  house. 

"Ah,  Madame,  how  do  you?  Will  you  have 
a  drink  or  are  you  too  proud  already?" 

"Mais  non,  Madame,  we  will  have  ze  leedle 
drink  as  usual.  And  how  have  you  been  get 
ting  on,  Madame?" 

"Ah,  no  at  all  well,  I  have  been  worried, 
ma  cherey  for  my  'usband  he  did  join  ze  Lib'ral 
Club. 

"Ah,  after  I  tell  you  my  leedle  experience, 
mon  Dieu!  you  won't  let  Alphonse  join  ze  damn 
Lib'ral  Club. 

"Listen.  As  M.  Raymond  stayed  till  i, 
3,  4th  o'clock  in  the  morning  at  the  Lib'ral 
Club,  I  was  told  one  or  two  or  three  leedle 
things  about  him,  but  of  course  I  did  not 

130 


think  or  believe  at  ze  time.  But  ze  three  time 
he  did  not  come  at  ze  4th  in  the  morning,  I  get 
up  and  dress  myself  and  go  arounds  to  ze 
Lib'ral  Club  and  does  bash  bangs  at  zat  door. 

"And  presently  a  head  comes  out  of  ze 
window  upstairs  and  he  says:  'What  you 
want  down  there  at  this  hour  of  ze  evening, 
Madame?' 

"  'I  want  M.  Raymond,  my  'usband.' 

"  'He  is  not  'ere,  Madame.  Ze  Club  always 
closes  at  eleven  ze  clock. ' 

"  'I  thank  you,  Monsieur,  sorry  to  trouble 
you/  So  I  put  zese  leedle  things  together  that 
I  had  been  told  and  I  jus'  go  rounds  ze  corner 
and  I  listen  down  ze  aria  and  hear  sounds  of 
reverie. 

"A  policeman  he  stood  at  ze  corner.  I  says 
to  ze  policeman:  'Here  is  two  shillings,  you 
go  rounds  ze  corner  and  you  sees  notings.  Ze 
madame  here  has  decoys  my  'usband  to  dance 
with  the  girls.' 

"And  ze  policeman  is  off  and  sees  notings. 

"Then  I  goes  close  to  ze  door  and  bash  bangs 
at  ze  door.  And  a  Frenchwoman  like  myself 
comes  up  and  she  says,  'What  you  want, 
Madame?' 

"I  said,  'I  want  my  'usband,  M.  Raymond. 
Zat  is  all.' 

"She  says,  'Your  'usband  not  'ere,  Ma 
dame.  ' 

"I  says,   'Yes,  I  'ear  'im  downstairs.' 

"Then  quick  she  calls  me  lair  and  I  gives 


her  a  bash  bang  down  into  ze  passage.  She 
cried  and  up  comes  ze  madame's  'usband. 

"He  says,  'What  you  do  to  my  wife,  you 
bad  madame?' 

"  I  says,  '  She  will  not  give  me  my  'usband. ' 

"He  says,  'You  are  a  bad  madame.  I  turn 
you  out  of  my  'ouse.  Your  'usband  not  'ere. ' 

"Then  just  comes  up  M.  Raymond. 

"  'Ah,'  says  I,  'this  is  all  I  jus'  want.  So 
you  come  along  wiz  me. ' 

"Ah,  my  dear,  we  did  'ave  a  leedle  words  on 
ze  road  'ome  and  M.  Raymond  says,  'A 
pretty  ting  you  done  for  yourself;  you  will  be 
sermonized  for  knocking  that  madame  down/ 

"But  I  patted  me  on  the  chest  and  I  said 
to  me,  'Louisa,  be  brave.' 

"A  day  or  two  after  dis,  a  sermon  came 
from  the  South  Western  Police  Court.  Ah, 
mon  Dieu,  I  was  jus'  a  leedle  frightened,  but  I 
said  to  me:  'Louisa,  you  have  been  ze  brave 
woman  and  you  mus'  be  brave  all  ze  time. ' 

"Eh  bien,  you  remember  ze  chapeau  I 
bought  in  ze  leedle  Soho  shop  and  also  that 
pretty  gown  in  ze  Chapelle  Blanche — tres 
chic? 

"Eh  bien,  I  put  on  ze  chapeau  and  ze  pretty 
dress  and  ze  nice  gloves  that  come  to  ze  elbows, 
and  I  had  a  cab  with  four  wheels  and  I  did  go 
to  ze  police  court. 

"Ah,  ma  chere,  when  I  get  to  ze  police  court, 
dere  was  a  very  fine  tall  handsome  Inspector 
and  he  jus'  hands  me  out  of  ze  cab  and  I  jus' 
go  into  ze  court  and  ze  case  was  called. 

132 


"And  ze  judge  he  was  dere  and  I  bows  to  ze 
judge  and  ze  judge  bows  to  me.  And  ze 
people,  ma  chere,  zey  were  ze  big  cowards.  Dey 
did  not  turn  up. 

"So  when  I  tells  ze  judge  my  leedle  story, 
he  does  dismiss  ze  case. 

"I  goes  outside  and  sees  ze  fine  tall  hand 
some  Inspector.  Ze  Inspector,  he  says:  'You 
'ave  got  off  very  well  to-day,  but  ze  excite 
ment!  You  mus'  come  wiz  me  and  'ave  a 
leedle  someting. ' 

"Well,  my  dear,  I  did  go  and  ze  Inspector 
he  give  me  the  winner  of  a  'orse  and  I  jus*  win 
forty  pounds,  ma  chere. 

"And  ze  people  w'ere  my  'usband  was 
dancing  came  to  me  in  ze  evening  and  apolo 
gized,  and  he  says:  'I'm  very  sorr',  madame, 
we  did  not  say  your  'usband  was  zere.  He  did 
no  'arm.  I  bring  you  a  leedle  present.  I  am 

chef  at  ze Hotel  and  'ere  is  a  big  basin  of 

drippin'  for  you,  Madame. ' 

"He  was  a  very  good  chef,  that  monsieur, 
and  so  was  the  dripping." 


THE  GREAT  DISAPPOINTMENT 

This  story  was  told  by  Clemens  at  the  Amer 
ican  Embassy,  Vienna.* 

"She  was  the  littlest,  the  sweetest  maiden 
of  about  ten  I  have  ever  seen,  and  she  came 
dancing  up  to  me  with  a  smile  and  wink  that 
was  simply  bewitching.  I  was  going  home  to 
27  Fifth  Avenue  after  a  tiresome  dinner  where 
I  had  to  make  a  speech  (had  to — God  bless  the 
organizer  of  the  dinner,  for  I  won't),  and  I  was 
as  tired  as  two  dogs  and  as  grumpy  as  seven 
bears,  when  this  vision  suddenly  burst  upon 
me.  I  saw  at  once  that  the  little  one  was  as 
happy  as  a  lark,  and  naturally  I  beamed  on 
her,  for  I  love  children. 

"As  she  was  tripping  along  just  as  if  I  had 
been  her  grandpa — trusting  me  with  little 
confidences  and  petting  my  arm,  she  prattled 
about  the  moon  that  would  soon  come  up  and 
the  bogies  and  the  bats  and  about  the  fright 
they  gave  her,  and  I  said: 

kittle  maid,  hadn't  you  better  go  home? 
Your  mother  may  be  anxious  about  you. ' 

"  'Oh,  no,'  she  said;  'mamma  knows  I  am 
out  and  she  is  at  the  window  watching.  She 
knows  that  I  am  walking  with  you,  for  I 
wanted  to  a  lot  of  times.' 

"Well,  I  felt  as  proud  as  Pierpont  Morgan 
on  discovering  a  Fifteenth  Century  missal  and 
buying  it  for  five  dollars.  And  in  my  mind  I 

*Miss  Lucy  Cleveland,  the  author,  heard  Mr.  Clemens  tell  the  same 
story  at  a  dinner  party  in  New  York. 

134 


patted  myself  on  the  back,  and  said:  'Mark, 
old  boy,  they  do  love  you,  all  of  them. '  Really, 
I  felt  tickled  all  over,  and  I  don't  know  how 
many  thousands  of  words  at  fifty  cents  'per' 
that  kid  wheedled  out  of  me  by  way  of  an 
swers  to  her  questions  and  by  way  of  compli 
ments.  She  was  a  princess  kid,  I  tell  you. 
When  we  arrived  at  No.  27,  I  insisted  upon 
taking  her  back  to  her  home  and  there  formally 
saying  good-by  to  her.  Indeed  I  would  have 
liked  to  kiss  that  little  lady,  but  as  her  mother 
was  at  the  window  I  didn't  dare.  And  that 
kid  kept  on  talking.  If  her  words  had  been 
buns,  single  handed  she  could  have  beaten 
Fleischman  with  all  his  hundreds  of  bakers. 
But  what  puzzled  me  was  that  she  was  forever 
talking  about  selling  tickets  and  how  nice  it 
must  be  to  take  so  much  cash  for  tickets.  I 
thought,  of  course,  she  was  referring  to  tickets 
at  church  festivals  and,  to  increase  my  credit 
with  her,  I  said  that  I  bought  lots  of  them 
and  that  people  took  chances  on  my  books 
and  sometimes  I  took  chances  myself  and  got 
burdened  with  some  to  cart  home. " 

'Oh,  you  write  books,  too?'  she  said. 

'Oh,  yes,'  I  said.  'I  am  a  sort  of  book 
worm,  and  here  is  your  home  and  now  you 
must  go  in,  for  it  is  getting  late  and  the  bats 
and  the  bogies  are  coming.  Good-night,  little 
lady,  and  sleep  well,  and  when  you  are  a  big 
girl  and  have  a  husband  and  a  house  and  a 
motor  car,  then  you  can  tell  your  friends  that 
once  you  walked  with  Mark  Twain " 


"  'Mark  Train!  I  never  heard  of  him.' 
"As  I  looked  at  my  adoring  and  adorable 
little  friend  her  lip  began  to  quiver.  It  quiv 
ered  still  more,  her  blue  eyes  filled — could  not 
hold  the  tears — they  dropped  down  on  her 
face  and  on  my  flattered  hand. 

"'Oh,  sir/  she  sobbed,  drawing  away  from 
me  (I  thought  she  was  broken-hearted  because 
she  had  to  leave  me) — 'Oh,'  she  said,  'I 
thought  you  were  Buffalo  Bill. 


136 


RHEUMATISM  AND  PRODDING 

Some  of  the  biographers  of  Mark  Twain 
have  made  a  lot  of  his  sufferings  by  rheuma 
tism  while  in  Berlin.  I  saw  him  almost  daily, 
except  when  he  was  down  with  bronchitis, 
and  I  heard  very  few  complaints  from  him  re 
rheumatism.  Occasionally  he  said,  "My 
damned  arm  has  done  some  howling  in  the 
night."  But  when  out  of  bed,  it  never 
"howled"  badly  enough  to  prevent  him  from 
writing  or  holding  a  book.  He  was  scribbling 
most  of  the  time,  when  not  talking  or  riding, 
or  walking,  and  when  I  saw  him  in  his  "Mat 
tress  Mausoleum"  (as  he  called  his  bed),  he 
handled  pipe,  papers,  knife  and  books  freely. 
I  honestly  believe  much  of  that  rheumatism 
scare  was  put  on.  For  Mark  liked  leisure 
above  all  things.  When  he  did  not  feel  like 
writing,  he  told  Livy  he  "had  it  bad,"  and 
escaped  a  scolding.  "Livy"  was  an  excellent 
wife  to  him,  but  she  had  the  commercial  spirit 
that  Mark  lacked — and  God  knows  he  needed 
prodding  once  in  a  while. 


ON  LITERARY  FRIENDSHIPS 

Mark  Twain  always  liked  to  talk  about  "La 
Mouche,  Heine's  girl -friend -to -the -death." 
One  morning,  at  the  British  Museum,  he  made 
me  hunt  through  dozens  of  books,  French, 
German  and  Italian,  for  her  real  name:  Ca- 
mille  Seldon. 

"So  she  wasn't  German,"  he  said.  "I 
thought  so,  for  a  German  girl,  by  her  innate 
heaviness,  might  have  spoiled  that  nimbleness 
of  language  we  admire  in  Heine.  Goethe's 
girls,  as  their  portraits  show,  were  all  beefy 
things — no,  not  all,  I  except  Gretchen — hence 
Goethe's  Olympian  periods,  his  ponderous 
style.  It's  wrong,  I  think,  to  credit  Camille 
with  mere  physical  influence  on  Heine.  Her 
limpid  French  conversation,  I  take  it,  aided 
in  imparting  to  his  French  verse  that  airy, 
fairy  lightness  which  a  foreigner  rarely  com 
mands." 

Some  one  reminded  Clemens  that  Camille 
also  had  been  the  friend  of  Taine. 

"A  lucky  girl!  The  most  poesy-saturated 
of  poets  and  the  Father  of  English  literature! 
I  call  him  the  Father,"  he  added,  "because  he 
made  so  many  people  read  serious  books 
which  without  his  advice  and  encouragement 
they  would  never  have  tackled." 


138 


BAYARD  TAYLOR'S  GERMAN 

"No,  I  haven't  got  an  ounce  of  envy  in  me. 
I  once  tried  hard  to  get  envious,  but  happily 
my  wife  interfered.  I  had  to  forget  about  it 
and  turn  my  mind  into  other,  cleaner  channels. 
That  was  on  our  first  trip  to  Europe,  in  1878. 
On  the  ship  we  met  Bayard  Taylor,  the  poet, 
bound  for  Berlin,  as  ambassador  to  Bismarck. 
That,  I  believe,  states  the  case  more  correctly 
than  the  official  *  ambassador  to  the  Court  of 
Berlin.' 

"Well,  Bayard  made  me  feel  pretty  cheap 
by  his  display  of  German.  That  fellow  was 
forever  talking,  thinking  and  writing  German. 
Compared  with  his,  my  own  miserable  German 
vocabulary  was  an  ant-hill  facing  Chimborazo. 
And  when  I  heard  him  recite  whole  acts  of  his 
metric  translation  of  Faust,  I  wished  myself 
in  his  shoes,  for  I  certainly  did  envy  the  man 
his  Teuton  knowledge.  However,  when  I  told 
Livy  about  it,  she  warned  me  and  made  me 
promise  to  suppress  the  nasty  habit.  Well 
done,  for  Bayard  Taylor  died  within  five  or 
six  months,  at  the  age  of  fifty-three." 


139 


GENIUS  IN  EXTREMIS 

When  we  were  about  to  pass  the  French 
Embassy  in  Berlin  one  afternoon,  Mark 
dragged  me  across  the  street,  saying: 

"See  those  horses?  That  Kaiser  is  in  there, 
making  love  to  the  Ambassador's  wife.  I 
don't  want  to  meet  him  as  he  comes  out  or 
when  he  is  thrown  out,  as  he  ought  to  be." 

At  that  moment  a  very  distinguished 
English-looking  gentleman  passed  us  in  a 
cab,  raising  his  hat  to  Mark. 

"Do  you  know  him?"  asked  Mark. 

"I  have  seen  him  in  Fleet  Street,  I  believe, 
but  I  don't  know  where  to  put  him.  As  you 
know,  my  eyes  don't  travel  far  these  days." 

"Why,"  said  Mark,  "this  is  'Labby' 
(Labouchere)  of  London  'Truth,'  the  Baron- 
maker.  I  call  him  that  because  he  actually 
put  hundreds  of  barons  into  the  world,  if 
not  into  the  peerage — namely,  when  he  acted 
as  Secretary  of  the  British  Embassy  in  Paris 
and  had  the  issuing  of  passports  in  hand. 
Suppose  John  Smith  and  Mary  Smith,  British 
subjects,  toddled  in  and  asked  for  their 
papers.  Labby  would  look  them  over  care 
fully  and  if  their  persons  and  address  lent 
itself  to  the  scheme,  would  make  out  the 
paper  for  '  Sir  John '  and  *  Lady  Mary. ' 
Of  course  the  people  stuck  to  the  title, 
acquired  under  the  government  seal,  for  the 

140 


rest  of  their  lives.  Indeed,  most  of  the 
Labby- created  nobles  by  and  by  gained 
popular  recognition  as  the  real  thing — bar 
onets  and  baronesses.  On  Labby 's  part  it 
was  all  fun — burlesque  pure  and  simple. 
Himself  a  noble  by  birth,  he  thought  the 
nobility  a  stupid  and  useless  institution  these 
days,  and  if  the  prime  minister — a  com 
moner — could  make  dukes  and  princes,  why 
could  not  he,  Labby,  at  least  make  Sirs 
and  Ladies?  But  of  course  when  the  govern 
ment  got  wise  to  it,  Labby  got  the  sack. 
Just  the  same,  he's  the  smartest  Englishman 
I've  met.  By  Jingo,  I  would  like  to  hear  his 
last  words  on  this  planet  of  ours  even  as  I 
would  like  to  have  heard  Heine's  grand: 
'Never  mind  my  sins,  God  will  forgive  them. 
Forgiving  is  his  business. 

Of  the  pair  of  geniuses,  Mark  died  first 
(April  21,  1910),  and  both  left  character 
istic  utterances.  Mark  said  to  his  physician: 

"Good-by.    If  we  meet " 

Labouchere,  shortly  before  his  end,  had 
been  lectured  by  a  sister  or  brother  on  the 
godless  life  he  had  led  and  had  been  assured 
that,  if  God  didn't  take  pity  on  him,  he 
would  certainly  go  to  a  hot  place.  An  hour 
or  so  after  listening  to  these  comforting 
remarks,  Labouchere  had  what  Twain  called 
on  another  occasion  a  "fair  wind  for  Para 
dise,"  /'.  *.,  he  was  dying  and  knew  it.  Now 

141 


it  happened  that  during  the  last  half-minute 
of  his  life  a  spirit  lamp  in  the  next  room 
exploded  with  a  loud  bang.  Labouchere 
raised  his  head  a  bit  and  said  feebly: 

"What— already?'' 

One  more  gasp  and  he  was  dead.  How 
Mark  would  have  enjoyed  Labby's:  "What, 
already?" 


142 


WHAT  MAY  HAPPEN  TO  YOU  AFTER 
YOU  ARE  DEAD 

With  Richard  Harding  Davis  I  had  covered 
the  coronation  of  the  Czar  in  Moscow  and 
Mark  could  never  get  enough  of  that  trip, 
asking  me  a  thousand  questions  about  the 
country  and  people.  But  what  most  inter 
ested  him  was  the  fact  that  they  had  taken 
Carlyle's  Cromwell  away  from  me  at  the 
frontier.  "You  can  have  it  back  when  you 
return/'  said  the  Russian  customs  people, 
but  they  stuck  to  my  book  just  the  same. 
/'Maybe  they  will  start  a  revolution  on 
the  strength  of  Carlyle,"  said  Mark.  "I 
hope  they  will." 

"Talking  of  Cromwell — I  am  glad  they 
have  no  Westminster  Abbey  in  the  States. 
And  here  is  why.  This  man  Cromwell  was 
alternately  an  anarchist  and  an  autocrat. 
More  powerful  than  any  king,  he  refused  the 
crown,  yet  made  Parliament  accept  his  im 
becile  son  as  his  successor.  They  buried 
him  in  Westminster  Abbey  with  all  the 
honors  due  a  king  and  after  two  years  dragged 
his  body  out  and  beheaded  the  poor  carcass, 
then  stuck  the  head  on  a  pike,  mounted  on 
Parliament  House.  You  say  even  if  we  had 
a  Westminster  Abbey  in  America  and  I  was 
buried  there,  yet  the  things  that  happened 
to  Cromwell  could  never  happen  to  me. 
But  I  don't  know  about  that.  When  I  was 
in  Paris  last,  somebody  offered  me  a  tooth 


out  of  the  head  of  Turenne,  who  had  been 
buried  two  hundred  years  or  more.  How 
did  he  get  that  tooth?  Why,  during  the 
revolution  the  Jacobins — ancestors  of  our 
present-day  anarchists — smashed  the  royal 
graves  at  Saint  Denis  and  flung  the  royal 
bones  to  the  winds.  Turenne  happened  to 
have  been  buried  among  his  peers  at  the 
feet  of  Louis  XIV.  That  is  the  reason  why 
he  was  dispossessed.  Now  comes  a  com 
mercially  inclined  Frenchman  who  had  read 
that  Turenne  had  been  blessed  with  ex 
ceptionally  fine  molars.  So  he  breaks  all 
the  teeth  out  of  the  dead  man's  jaws  and 
sells  them  to  the  highest  bidder.  I  was 
told  there  was  only  one  left  and  I  could  have 
it  for  100  francs.  But  I  was  more  interested 
in  my  own  teeth  than  in  Turenne's  and 
refused  to  do  business  with  the  antiquarian. 
However,  to  have  my  little  joke  I  said  to 
him,  'If  you  had  the  "Henri  Quatre"  of  the 
4th  Henry  I  might  buy. ' 

'The  Jacobins  plucked  that  out,  too/  he 
replied,  'but  there  isn't  a  hair  left  for  sale 
nowadays.  However,  I  may  locate  one  or 
more  by  diligent  hunting  and  I'll  let  you 
know  if  I  succeed. ' 

"Think  of  it !  Henri  Quatre's  Henri  Quatre 
torn  out  by  the  roots  and  sold  at  so  much 
per  hair!  That  mustache  and  goatee  that 
was  next  to  so  many  sweet  lips — the  sweetest 
in  France.  I  have  seen  the  originals  of  some 
of  his  letters  in  the  Musee  de  Cluny,  Paris, 

144 


and   had   some  of  those  little   masterpieces 
of  grace  translated  for  me." 

Mark  took  out  his  Paris  notebook  and  read: 
"  'My  true  heart/  he  wrote  at  one  time 
to  Diane  de  Poitiers,  'you  have  lied.  I 
shall  not  see  you  for  ten  days.  It  is  enough 
to  kill  me.  I  will  not  tell  you  how  much  I 
care,  it  would  make  you  too  vain,  and  I 
think  you  love  me,  so  with  a  happy  heart  I 
finish/ 

"In  answer  Diane  wrote  back,  'If  I  die, 
have  me  opened  and  you  will  find  your  image 
engraved  on  my  heart. ' 


0 


KINGS   IN    THEIR    BIRTHDAY  SUITS 

Two  things  Mark  Twain  was  especially 
concerned  about — the  success  of  his  "Joan 
of  Arc/'  which  he  considered  his  best  work, 
and  the  possibility  of  getting  King  Leopold 
hanged. 

Leopold  and  the  Czar  were  his  special 
betes  noires.  "I'd  like  to  see  these  two 
fellows  face  their  people  naked  except  for 
their  whiskers.  Let  them  face  public  opinion 
in  their  birthday  suits  and  see  what  will 
happen  to  them." 


146 


9 

MARK  ON  LINCOLN'S  HUMANITY 

When  Ida  M.  Tarbell's  "Life  of  Lincoln" 
was  running  in  McClure's  during  the  late 
nineties,  Mark  said  at  luncheon  at  the  Cafe 
Ronacher,  Vienna,  one  afternoon:  "That 
woman  is  writing  a  wonderfully  good  and 
accurate,  intimate  and  comprehensive  book 
and  I  do  hope  that,  in  the  end,  she  will  give 
the  same  prominence  to  Lincoln's  corre 
spondence  on  pardons  as  to  other  state  papers 
of  his.  When  you  come  to  think  of  it,  a 
lot  of  nonentities  have  got  credit  for  able 
state  papers,  but  it  takes  humanity  to  com 
mute  a  sentence  of  death  and  Lincoln  has 
commuted  thousands.  The  only  one  he 
didn't  and  couldn't  commute  was  one  im 
posed  by  our  friend,  Ward  Hill  Lamon. 

"Lamon,  then  Marshal  of  the  District  of 
Columbia,  had  seen  Lincoln  safely  home  and 
then  made  his  usual  rounds  of  the  White 
House  grounds.  All  seemed  well,  no  cause 
for  suspicion,  Ward  told  me,  and  he  was 
about  to  retire,  when  he  thought  he  saw  some 
movement  amid  a  clump  of  green  foliage. 
It  looked  as  if  a  body  was  rising  from  the 
ground. 

'I  reached  the  spot  by  three  leaps,  faced 
a  dark  figure  and,  without  ado,  dealt  him  a 
blow  square  between  the  eyes,  knocking  him 
down,'  said  the  Marshal. 

"Well,"  continued  Mark,  "you  know 
Lamon  as  he  looks  now,  still  a  command- 

*47 


ing  figure,  though  worried  and  weakened  by 
diabetes.  In  the  early  sixties  he  was  a 
giant,  a  John  L.  Sullivan  as  a  hitter.  That 
blow  of  his  killed  the  stranger  in  the  White 
House  grounds  and  when  the  body  was 
carried  to  the  Secret  Service  offices  and 
searched,  they  found  it  to  be  that  of  a  South 
ern  gentleman  of  distinguished  family.  He 
had  two  pistols  and  two  heinous  looking 
knives  on  him — undoubtedly  Ward  had  stop 
ped  short  the  career  of  one  of  the  forerunners 
of  John  Wilkes  Booth,  postponing  the  great 
tragedy  several  months — I  have  forgotten  the 
date.  Wait,  it  happened  during  the  night 
when  Lamon  brought  the  President  back 
from  the  Soldiers'  Home,  outside  of  Washing 
ton. 

"Lincoln's  visit  to  the  Soldiers'  Home  was 
not  on  the  schedule,  Lamon  told  me,  and  he 
was  surprised  and  angered  when,  calling  at 
the  White  House,  he  heard  of  his  riding  away 
all  by  himself,  for  it  was  just  such  opportun 
ities  as  would-be  assassins  were  looking  for. 

"At  the  stables  Lamon  learned  that  the 
President  came  there  in  person,  ordered  'Old 
Abe/  his  favorite  army  mule,  saddled  and, 
half  an  hour  ago,  rode  away  as  carelessly  as 
any  private  citizen  might  do.  There  was  a 
grain  of  comfort  in  the  character  of  the 
mount  selected,  for  'Old  Abe'  wouldn't  go 
faster  than  a  dogtrot  if  you  beat  him  to 
death.  So  Lamon  selected  the  fastest  horse 
he  could  borrow  and  in  a  twinkling  was  en 

148 


route  for  the  Soldiers'  Home.  As  calculated, 
he  met  the  President  half-way  down  the 
road  and  Lincoln,  far  from  suspecting  that 
the  Marshal  was  on  his  trail,  invited  him  to 
come  along  and  have  some  fun.  Well,  the 
President  had  a  jolly  time  at  the  Soldiers' 
Home,  swapping  stories  with  veterans  and 
boys,  listening  to  the  singing,  declaiming 
poetry  and  forgetting  the  care  of  his  exalted 
office. 

"And  he  kept  up  the  fun  on  the  way  home, 
talking  to  his  mule  and  explaining  to  'Old 
Abe'  what  a  'Misery'  Hill  was.  (He  always 
used  to  call  Lamon  by  his  second  name.) 
Hill,  the  President  told  his  namesake,  was 
always  looking  for  danger,  always  suspecting 
somebody,  never  content  with  the  troubles 
one  couldn't  escape,  etc.,  etc.  But  while 
Lamon  laughed  at  the  President's  sallies  and 
encouraged  his  carefree  humor,  he  kept  both 
eyes  open  and  if  anything  or  anybody  had 
stirred  in  front,  back  or  at  the  sides  of  the 
road,  his  revolver  was  ready  for  emergency." 


149 


AN  ENGLISH  LOVER  OF  KINGS 
AND  A  HATER 

"Look  at  those  fools  going  to  pieces  over 
old  Doc  Johnson — call  themselves  Americans 
and  lick-spittle  the  toady  who  grabbed  a 
pension  from  the  German  King  of  England 
that  hated  Americans,  tried  to  flog  us  into 
obedience  and  called  George  Washington 
traitor  and  scoundrel." 

Thus  spoke  Mark  Twain  in  the  Doctor 
Johnson  room  of  the  Cheshire  Cheese,  the 
Strand,  where  the  old  thoroughfare  becomes 
"the  Street  of  Ink"  or  Newspaper  Row,  and 
while  we  were  enjoying  the  famous  meat 
pie  served  there  on  certain  days  of  the  week. 

"You  are  pleased  to  occupy  Miss  Evelyn's 
seat,"  whispered  James  the  waiter,  looking 
at  Mark. 

"Miss  Evelyn — what?"  demanded  our 
friend. 

James  blushed.  "Miss  Evelyn,  why — 
Miss  Evelyn,  the  beautiful  young  American 
lady  who  came  with  the  millionaire,  Mr. 
Harry  Thaw.  While  she  was  in  London  I 
always  had  to  keep  for  her  the  seat  under 
the  Doctor's  portrait  on  pie-day." 

"Not  because  she  loved  Johnson  better, 
but  because  she  liked  being  in  the  limelight 
worse,"  commented  Mark. 

"Of  course,"  he  continued,  "no  English 
man  misses  doing  the  kowtow  to  Johnson 
when  he's  got  half  a  chance,  but  of  our  own 

150 


people,  coming  to  the  Cheese,  ninety-nine 
per  cent,  do  so  because  they  don't  know  the 
man,  and  the  others  because  they  feel  tickled 
to  honor  a  writer  a  hundred  and  fifty  years 
or  so  after  he  is  good  and  rotten. " 

"Read  Johnson  plentifully,  I  suppose," 
mocked  Bram  Stoker,  famous  as  author, 
critic,  barrister  and  Henry  Irving's  associate. 

"Not  guilty — never  a  written  word  of  his," 
answered  honest  Mark.  "I  gauge  Johnson's 
character  by  his  talks  with  that  sot  Bozzy, 
whom  foolish  old  Carlyle  called  the  greatest 
biographer  ever  because,  I  suppose,  Bozzy 
interviewed  Johnson  on  such  momentous 
questions  as:  'What  would  you  do,  sir,  if 
you  were  locked  up  in  the  Tower  with  a 
baby?'  " 

"Well,  what  would  you  do,"  asked  Bram. 

"Throw  it  out  of  the  window  to  a  passing 
milkman,  if  it  was  weaned  and  if  there  was 
no  cow  around,"  said  Mark. 

When  the  merriment  had  subsided,  Mark 
continued  the  slaughter  of  Johnson:  "Why, 
he  was  a  man  who  would  have  called  brother 
a  cannibal  island  king  who  had  eaten  a  Jesuit, 
while  he  would  have  mobilized  the  whole 
British  fleet  against  savages  who  dined  off  an 
Episcopalian." 

"And  if  they  had  fried  a  Bishop  of  the 
established  Church  down  in  the  Pacific?" 

"Ask  me  something  easier,"  answered 
Mark.  "For  all  I  know  Johnson  may  have 
been  the  guy  who  invented  a  seething  lake 


of  fire  and  brimstone  de  luxe  for  married 
couples  who  had  loved  wisely  and  too  well 
on  a  Christian  holiday." 

"Boldly  stolen  from  Voltaire,"  suggested 
Bram. 

"No,  I  read  about  the  lake  in  one  of 
Anatole  France's  weekly  essays  in  *  Le  Temps, ' 
but  there  was  no  reference  to  Johnson,  of 
course. 

"Speaking  of  Voltaire — I  don't  remember 
that  he  mentioned  Johnson  in  his  English 
Letters,  though  he  did  take  the  trouble  (in 
Eighteenth  Century  French  ignorance)  to 
call  Shakespeare  'a  drunken  savage,'  'an 
amazing  genius'  and  'an  indecent  buffoon  who 
had  rendered  English  taste  a  ruined  lady  for 
two  hundred  years  to  come. ' 

"Date's  quite  correct,  as  I  once  pointed 
out  to  poor  Gene  Field,"  interrupted  Stoker. 
He  called  for  a  slate — they  had  no  paper  at 
the  Cheese — and  scrawled: 

"Opening  of  the  Lyceum  Theatre 
under  Henry  Irving  and  Bram 
Stoker 1878 

Death  of  Shakespeare 1616 

Interval 262. " 

"As  you  see,"  added  Bram,  "Voltaire  was 
out  only  a  little  more  than  half  a  century. 
And  what's  half  a  century  when  the  Oxford 
Dodo — if  the  moths  hadn't  eaten  him — 
would  now  be  seven  and  twenty  trillions 

152 


years  old?  But  go  on  with  your  Voltaire, 
Mark." 

"You  mean  Johnson/'  said  Mark;  "how 
he  would  have  cackled  had  he  known  that 
Voltaire  got  his  start  in  literature  by  the 
library  he  bought  as  a  youngster  out  of  Ninon 
de  1'Enclos'  two  thousand  livres  bequest. 
*  Authorship  reared  on  a  wench's  patrimony/ 
I  hear  him  expectorate,  and  George  Rex 
would  have  been  tickled  to  death,  for  John 
son,  he  would  have  argued,  has  now  ex 
tracted  the  sting  from  the  Frenchman's 
description  of  Kings,  as  '  a  pack  of  rogues  and 
highwaymen. ' 

As  he  was  speaking  Mark  grabbed  hold  of 
his  elbow,  indulging  in  a  grimace  of  pain. 
"What's  the  date?"  he  demanded  abruptly. 

"August  25th." 

"Late,  as  usual,"  said  Mark  with  mock 
mournfulness.  "True  friends  of  mankind  and 
haters  of  intolerance  have  their  rheumatism 
or  colic  on  August  24th,  the  day  of  the  Mas 
sacre  of  St.  Bartholomew.  Voltaire  always 
timed  his  boils  so  and  got  a  rash  or  the  itch 
on  May  I4th  for  good  measure." 

"What  happened  on  May  I4th?" 

"Why,  you  ignoramus,  on  May  I4th,  in 
the  year  I  have  forgot,  the  humanest  and 
royalest  of  kings,  Henri  IV,  was  assassinated 
by  a  damned  monk." 


153 


MARK   GOT   ARRESTED    IN    BERLIN 

It  was  in  Koernerstrasse  No.  7,  of  course, 
and  it  happened  in  this  way.  Mark,  his  wife, 
Mrs.  Crane,  the  three  children,  and  the  gover 
ness  were  having  breakfast  when  Gretchen 
came  in,  excitement  written  all  over  her  face; 
as  Mark  said:  "You  could  hear  her  heart 
beat.  There  was  a  frightful  commotion  under 
her  shirtwaist. " 

Gracious  Lord, '  she  said,  addressing  me, 
*  there  is  a  Mister  Policeman  outside  who 
wants  to  see  you,  Gracious  Lord. ' 

'Tell  him  to  go  to  blazes/  I  said,  Susan 
translating  the  American  classic  into  even 
more  classic  German. 

"'My  God/  groaned  Gretchen,  'I  could 
never  say  anything  like  that  to  a  Mister 
Policeman.  He  is  a  Mister  Policeman,  don't 
you  understand,  Gracious  Lord?' 

"'Well/  I  said,  'I  haven't  had  any  break 
fast,  and  if  the  Kaiser  himself  called  I  would 
throw  him  out. ' 

"At  this  moment  there  was  a  peremptory 
knock  at  the  door  and  a  raspy  voice  bellowed: 
'  Wird's  bald  ? '    (Aren't  you  coming  ?) 

"Now  I  got  real  mad  and  telling  Susie  to 
get  the  revolver  we  didn't  have  in  the  house, 
I  went  to  the  door. 

['I  am  Mr.  Clemens/  I  said  to  the  limb 
of  the  law.  'What  do  you  want  at  this 
unearthly  hour,  of  an  American  citizen? 
More  taxes?  I  have  paid  taxes  on  a  dog 


which  I  don't  own,  and  I  paid  church  taxes 
although  I  never  go  to  church.  I  am  tired 
of  your  tax  rot.  I  won't  pay  another  pfennig. ' 

"'Take  a  care,  Herr  Clemens/  warned 
the  mister  policeman.  'I  heard  you  mention 
the  name  of  our  All  Gracious  Kaiser,  and 
now  you  talk  like  an  anarchist.  We  won't 
stand  for  that  in  Berlin. ' 
'  Who  are  we?  'I  asked. 

"  'The  police/  he  answered. 

"  'Well,  tell  the  police  to !' 

"And  no  sooner  had  I  uttered  that  revo 
lutionary  platitude  when  the  mister  police 
man  dumped  his  helmet  on  his  frowzy  bean, 
knocked  his  heels  together,  and  put  his  right 
hand  on  his  sword  hilt  and  sang  out: 
1  'Herr,  you  are  under  arrest.1 

"Whereupon  all  the  women  of  the  house 
hold  and  all  the  listening  neighbors  were 
petrified  with  terror.  But  I  laughed  to  beat 
the  band  to  hide  my  cowardice.  My  hilarity 
took  the  mister  policeman  off  his  perch  for 
the  moment,  and  he  said: 

'What  are  you  laughing  at?' 

"I  answered:  'I  am  tickled  because  you 
threaten  me  with  jail,  with  the  gallows  per 
haps,  and  don't  know  enough  to  state  the 
nature  of  my  crime. ' 

'"That's  easy,  you  are  arrested  for  a  breach 
of  the  city  regulations.  You  allowed  your 
servants  to  put  the  bedclothes  near  the 
window,  and  when  I  stand  on  tiptoes  on  the 
other  side  of  the  street,  I  can  see  them.' 


"I  laughed  again.  He  repeated  that  I  was 
under  arrest,  and  ordered  me  to  come  to 
court  the  next  morning  at  nine. 

"So  next  morning  at  nine  I  went  to  court, 
the  legation  having  furnished  me  with  a 
lawyer.  When  the  judge  came  in,  I  rose 
like  everybody  else  to  salute  His  Honor, 
then  settled  down  to  watch  proceedings,  and 
without  wishing  to  be  offensive,  of  course, 
I  slung  one  knee  over  the  other.  Thereupon, 
the  judge  called  me  to  the  bar  and  fined  me 
twenty  marks  for  indecent  behavior.  In  a 
German  court  I  was  expected  to  bend,  not 
cross,  my  knees.  Next  my  case  was  called 
and,  as  the  court  was  possibly  prejudiced  on 
account  of  the  knee  incident,  I  was  fined  ten 
marks  for  showing  perfectly  clean  linen,  and 
twenty  marks  for  laughing  at  a  mister  police 
man.  It  cost  me  fifty  marks  ($12.50)  all  in 
all  and  I  expected  to  make  about  five  hundred 
dollars  writing  about  my  disgrace.  How 
ever,  Livy  thought  the  telling  of  it  would 
deal  the  family  escutcheon  a  blow  from  which 
it  could  never  hope  to  recover  and  so  I  had 
to  stick  to  my  five-cent  stogies  the  same  as 
the  mister  policeman." 


156 


BOOKS  THAT  WEREN'T  WRITTEN 

As  every  friend  of  Mark  Twain's  writings 
knows,  Mark  was  never  short  on  literary  proj 
ects,  and  at  the  time  of  their  conception 
all  looked  exceedingly  good  to  him.  As  a 
rule  he  would  start  work  on  the  new  subject 
at  once  with  enthusiasm  unlimited,  writing, 
dictating,  rewriting,  dictaphoning  and  what 
not!  Small  wonder  that  the  waiters  at  the 
Hotel  Metropole  in  Vienna  called  him  a 
"dictator."  However,  not  infrequently  his 
golden  imaginings  proved  idle  dross,  or  else 
were  put  aside  for  new  fancies.  During  his 
Berlin  season  he  was  very  keen,  at  one  time, 
on  writing  a  book  on  the  Three  Charles's, 
dealing  with  a  terzetto  of  crowned  rascals, 
but  the  project,  like  so  many  others,  was 
abandoned  or  died.  If  I  remember  rightly, 
Clemens  told  me,  either  in  Vienna  or  London, 
that  he  might  have  felt  stronger  on  the  Three 
Charles's  if  it  wasn't  for  Thackeray's  Four 
Georges. 

The  Three  Charles's  idea  was  born  of  this 
slight  incident: 

We  had  met  at  the  famous  Cafe  Bauer, 
Herr  Bamberger,  some  time  private  secre 
tary  to  Charles  of  Brunswick,  better  known 
as  the  Diamond  Duke.  Bamberger  told  us 
some  racy  stories  about  the  late  Highness 
who  had  left  a  million  to  a  Swiss  town  on 
condition  that  it  set  up  a  monument  to  his 
memory.  The  monument  was  built,  but  so 


faultily  that  after  six  months  or  so  it  tumbled 
down.  And  the  debris  having  been  carted 
away,  Charles'  dream  of  glory  came  to  an 
abrupt  end. 

Mark  and  Bamberger  had  several  more 
interviews  and  one  morning,  at  the  Legation, 
Clemens  announced  that  his  next  book  would 
be  "The  Three  Charles's,"  Charles  the  First 
and  the  Second  of  England  and  Charles  of 
Brunswick,  who  was  also  partly  English. 

"In  all  his  long  life,"  said  Mark,  "the 
Brunswick  Charles  did  only  one  decent  thing 
and  that  was  a  lie.  'Here  reposes  the  mur 
dered  Queen  of  England/  he  had  chiselled 
upon  the  entrance  to  the  mausoleum  harbor 
ing  the  remains  of  Queen  Charlotte,  wife  of 
George.  Now  this  fellow  George  knew  more 
about  buttons  for  a  waistcoat,  or  sauce  for 
a  partridge,  than  about  kingship,  he  fought — 
but  certainly  did  not  murder  his  wife.  On 
the  other  hand,  Bamberger  tells  me,  that  the 
Brunswick  Charles  poisoned  a  number  of 
people  while  playing  at  kingship.  Yet  all 
the  punishment  he  got  at  the  hands  of  his 
loving  subjects  was  the  dirty  kick-out.  They 
burned  his  palace,  besides,  but  later  had  to 
rebuild  it  at  their  own  cost.  In  short,  get 
the  true  picture  of  Charles  and  loathe  royalty 
ever  afterwards/'  recommended  Mark. 

"  You  can't  conceive  of  the  meanness  of 
this  German  kinglet,"  said  Mark  at  another 
time.  "Once  he  had  trouble  with  a  courtier, 
Baron  Cramner.  The  Baron  fled  to  escape 

158 


a  dose  of  aqua  toffana^  but  his  wife,  who 
expected  her  first  baby,  had  to  remain  in 
Brunswick.  What  does  Charles  do?  He 
forbids  all  physicians,  surgeons  and  mid- 
wives,  on  pain  of  imprisonment  and  loss  of 
license,  to  attend  her  Ladyship.  And  he 
set  spies  about  her  house  to  be  informed  of 
the  time  of  travail.  And  when  she  was  in 
agony,  he  had  a  huge  mass  of  powder,  said 
Bamberger,  five  thousand  pounds,  exploded 
in  the  neighborhood  of  her  residence.  There 
are  a  hundred  more  stories  like  that.  After 
he  fled  from  Brunswick,  the  Duke's  medi- 
icine  chest  was  found  to  be  crammed  full  of 
poison  bottles  and  powders,  the  label  of  each 
container  showing  how  often  employed  and 
how  long  it  took  for  the  poison  to  work. 

"This  Diamond  Duke  got  away  with 
eleven  million  thalers  of  the  people's  money; 
he  left  one  million  thalers  behind  because 
he  couldn't  get  at  them.  And  that  not 
withstanding,  this  murderer  and  thief  was 
allowed  to  live  the  life  of  a  distinguished 
prince  in  London  and  Paris.  Wait  till  I  get 
through  with  him  and  his  namesakes  in  the 
royalty  business." 


159 


MARK  ENJOYED  OTHER 
HUMORISTS 

Mark  and  I  were  walking  through  a  rather 
disreputable  little  street,  lined  by  private 
hotels,  which  leads  from  the  Strand  to  the 
Playhouse,  London,  when  he  suddenly  stop 
ped  and  pointed  to  a  bronze  tablet  on  an 
old  house  about  the  middle  of  the  block. 

"Read,"  he  commanded,  but  my  eyes 
refused  to  climb  to  the  second  story. 

"Why  this  used  to  be  the  abode  of  the  poet 
who  has  said: 

"  'The  English  love  Liberty  as  their  wife,' 
'The  French  as  their  Mistress,' 
'The  Germans  as  a  Granny,  long  dead.'" 

"Heine,"  I  ventured. 

"Come  to  think  of  it,  I  am  not  absolutely 
sure,  that  Heine  coined  that  political  docu 
ment,"  admitted  Mark,  "but  it  is  very  much 
in  the  manner  of  an  epigram  he  did  write,  I 
believe. 

"  'Life's  a  yawning  Nitchevo, 
The  Shadow  of  a  single  nought, 
The  Dream  of  a  Flea, 
A  Drama  by  Teufelsdroeckh. ' " 

I  confess  I  heard  this,  too,  for  the  first 
time;  possibly  Mark  got  off  the  fireworks 
all  by  his  loneness,  pour  passer  le  temps. 

"Howells  introduced  me  to  Heine,"  he 
explained  during  the  entr'acte.  "I  am  glad 
he  did,  for  I  never  found  in  his  writings 

1 60 


'the  bitter  Jew  who  emptied  all  the  insult 
in  his  soul  on  Aryan  heads/  But  then  I 
read  Heine  only  for  his  glittering  wit,  the 
scintillating  glow  of  his  fancy." 


161 


MARK  TWAIN  AND  THF   ENGLISH 
HACK-WRITER 

A  Berlin  cartoon  paper,  "Ulk,"  once  rep 
resented  Twain  as  "an  Arthurian  Knight, 
canned  up  to  the  neck  in  armour/'  galloping 
after  kill-joys  and  such,  and  picking  them 
up  with  his  lance  and  warhooping  like  wild. 
That's  what  he  would  like  to  have  done  to 
the  hack  of  a  London  publishing  house,  who 
had  interfered  with  his  copy,  striking  out 
sentences,  and  words,  and  substituting  his 
own  "insular  ignorance"  wherever  Mark's 
broad  humanity  ran  amuck  of  public  opinion 
as  he,  the  hack,  understood  it. 

Mark  told  me  that  he  spent  three  days 
"abolishing  that  cad"  (quoting  from  Carlyle) 
and  I  think  he  added: 

"I  gave  him  at  least  part  of  the  Hades 
and  brimstone  he  deserved.  There  were 
such  moving  passages  as  ' monumental  ass,' 
'masticator  of  commonplaces,'  'offspring  of 
a  court  fool,'  'clownish  idiot,'  etc.  All  the 
hatred,  all  the  venom  that  was  in  my  system 
I  let  loose  upon  that  damn'  fool,  squirted  it 
into  him  with  all  the  force  that  I  was  capable 
of.  Oh,  I  laid  him  out.  If  he  had  had  the 
chance  to  read  the  letter,  his  own  mother 
would  not  have  recognized  him. 

"But,  as  you  may  have  heard,  women 
know  these  things  better,  and  Livy  destroyed 
that  wonderful  letter  of  mine,  burned  it  up 

162 


or  fed  it  to  the  chickens — I  don't  know  which. 
Anyhow  the  letter  wasn't  mailed  and  that 
English  fool  thinks  to  this  very  day  that  he 
flabbergasted  me. " 


163 


MARK  THOUGHT  JOAN  OF  ARC 
WAS  SLANDERED 

I  was  telling  Mark  about  some  frolic  at 
the  Berlin  Court,  when  the  sprightly  "Lott- 
chen,"  Princess  of  Meiningen,  William's 
sister,  proposed  a  riddle  that  puzzled  the 
exalted,  but  not  too  quick-witted  company — 

"Even  to  the  utmost — I  know  what  you 
want  to  say.  They  tell  me  they  are  having 
the  charade-fever  at  the  Schloss,  is  that  it?" 

"Precisely,"  I  answered,  and  went  on  to 
tell  of  the  silly  rebus  competitions  in  which 
the  Kaiser  took  special  delight.  I  had  my 
story  from  the  Baroness  Von  Larisch,  a  wit 
ness,  who  enjoyed  a  photographic  memory. 

"A  movie  memory,"  corrected  Mark,  "but 
go  on." 

Well,  I  reported,  H.  R.  H.  quoted  nine  or 
ten  descriptions  of  the  party  to  be  guessed 
at,  and  neither  the  Majesties,  nor  the  High 
nesses,  nor  the  Graces,  nor  the  Disgraces 
came  anywhere  near  the  solution.  Where 
upon  Lottchen  startled  the  company  by 
announcing  the  answer:  "Joan  of  Arc." 

Twain  took  the  cigar  out  of  his  mouth  and 
sat  up  straight,  which,  as  everybody  knows, 
he  did  only  on  rare  occasions. 

"Blasphemy  most  horrible!"  he  thundered, 
"making  a  joke  of  Joan  of  Arc,  my  Joan  of 
Arc!" 

"Your  book  isn't  out  yet,"  I  said  by  way 
of  pouring  oil  on  troubled  waters.  "And  until 

164 


it  sees  the  light  of  print  people  will  puzzle 
whether  your  Joan  was  saint,  witch,  man, 
maid  or  something  else. " 

Mark  had  replaced  his  cigar  and  was  now 
chewing  it  viciously. 

"Let's  have  the  story/'  he  said.  While 
he  read  Joan  of  Arc's  ephemeral  epitaph, 

Suoted  by  Lottchen,  the  stern  lines  of  his 
ice  gradually  softened  and  coming  to  the 
end,  he  laughed  outright.  "Tiptop,"  he 
chuckled,  "I  wish  I  had  done  these  verses 
myself.  But,  of  course,  if  I  had  thought  of 
them  fifteen  or  more  years  ago,  I  would 
never  have  taken  Joan  seriously." 

The  verses  that  amused  the  great  humorist, 
read  as  follows: 

"Here  lies  Joan  of  Arc:  the  which 
Some  count  man,  and  something  more; 
Some  count  maid,  and  some  a  bore. 
Her  life's  in  question,  wrong  or  right; 
Her  death's  in  doubt  by  laws  or  might. 
Oh,  innocence!  take  heed  of  it, 
How  thpu,  too,  near  to  guilt  doth  sit. 
(Meantime,  France  a  wonder  saw: 
A  woman  rule,  'gainst  Salic  law!) 
But,  reader,  be  content  to  stay 
Thy  censure  till  the  judgment-day; 
Then  shalt  thou  know,  and  not  before, 
Whether  saint,  witch,  man,  maid,  or  bore." 


165 


RUNNING  AMUCK— ALMOST 

At  one  of  Mrs.  Clemens'  tea  parties  in 
Vienna  a  lady  of  the  Court  asked  Mark 
whether  he  had  ever  visited  a  certain  town, 
naming  an  Austrian  health  resort. 

"Yes,  nice  place.  I  left  my  sour  stomach 
there." 


166 


MARK'S  IDIOMATIC  GEMS 

"Of  course  you  have  had  no  serious  quarrel 
with  the  Church?"  he  was  asked  by  Dr. 
Dryander,  the  former  Kaiser's  body  chaplain. 

"Oh,  my,  no — far  from  it,"  vowed  Mark. 
"Such  expressions  as  'the  duck  that  runs  the 
gospel  mill'  and  'the  boss  of  the  doxology 
works  who  waltzed  a  dead  'un  through  hand 
some/  are  idiomatic  gems  I  picked  up  in 
the  mining  camps.  They  are  not  meant  in 
derision. 

"William  was  talking  with  my  cousin, 
General  Von  Versen,"  added  Mark,  reporting 
the  case  at  Mr.  Phelps'  office  a  few  days  after 
wards — otherwise,  you  may  be  sure,  he  would 
have  ordered  me  flayed  alive,  for  isn't  he 
the  identical  gander  bossing  the  German 
gospel  mill?" 


167 


MARK  AND  THE  GIRLS  THAT 
LOVE  A  LORD 

Moberly  Bell,  the  last  great  editor  of 
"The  Times/'  London,  before  Northcliffe, 
was  not  nearly  so  Olympian  as  people  thought 
who  had  never  met  him.  I  often  warmed 
one  of  the  enormous  armchairs  in  his  enor 
mous  office — Bell  was  a  six-footer,  as  broad 
as  an  ox,  and  his  room  at  the  Thunderer's 
office  resembled  a  cathedral  rather  than  the 
ordinary  editorial  cubby -hole.  I  brought 
over  Mark  one  afternoon  and  he  told  Bell 
of  the  trouble  he  had  buying  "The  Times" 
at  "The  Times"  office. 

"I  offered  my  sixpence  across  the  counter, 
saying  'Today's  paper,  please/"  he  drawled, 
"but  was  quickly  put  to  the  right-about. 
'You  will  find  the  commissioner  outside,  at 
the  door;  he  will  fetch  the  paper  and  accept 
payment  if  you  are  not  a  regular  subscriber, ' 
I  was  rebuked. 

"Well  I  looked  outside  and  instead  of  a 
commissioner  found  a  field  marshal,  as  big 
as  a  house,  hung  with  medals,  and  festooned 
with  silver  lace. 

'  Your  excellency, '  I  murmured  dis 
tractedly,  'I  was  ordered  to  find  the  com 
missioner  to  fetch  me  a  paper.  May  I  be  so 
bold  as  to  ask  whether  you  have  seen  that 
individual?' 

"The  field  marshal  touched  his  three- 
cornered  hat  and  replied  in  the  most  stately 

168 


and  dignified  manner:  'Why,  of  course,  I 
will  get  you  a  paper,  Mr.  Clemens,  if  you 
will  deign  to  wait  five  or  six  minutes/ 

"Then  it  was  my  turn  to  put  on  airs," 
concluded  Mark.  : '  I  am  going  to  see  Mr. 
Moberly  Bell/  I  said;  'fetch  me  the  paper 
upstairs  and  keep  the  change/  : 

We  were  still  laughing  when  a  copy  boy 
entered  with  a  trayful  of  dispatches.  "Allow 
me,"  said  Mr.  Bell.  "It  will  take  but  a  minute 
to  skim  over  these  wires."  But  he  inter 
rupted  himself  immediately. 

"There's  a  job  for  you,  Fisher,"  he  said, 
handing  me  a  Paris  dispatch.  "Blowitz  cables 
that  your  Aunt  Rosine  is  dying.  Hope  she 
will  leave  you  a  lot  of  money.  'The  Times' 
will  take  eight  hundred  words  on  Rosine, 
sixpence  a  word,  you  know.  Let  me  have 
them  by  seven  to-night." 

"My,  I  wish  I  had  an  aunt  that  I  could 
make  sixpence  a  word  out  of,"  said  Mark, 
as  we  were  going  down  the  lift,  which  is 
British  for  elevator.  "Who  is,  or  was,  this 
relative  of  yours  in  which  'The  Times'  is  in 
terested  to  the  extent  of  eight  hundred 
words?" 

"Why  Rosine  Stoltz,  whom  Verdi  called 
'his  divine  inspiration/  the  creator  of  Aida 
and  of  the  title  roles  of  most  of  Rossini's 
Grand  Operas." 

"That's  a  jolly  mouthful,"  assented  Mark, 
"but  couldn't  she  do  anything  but  sing?" 

169 


"She  was  not  only  the  solitary  rival  ever 
recognized  by  Jenny  Lind,  but  the  greatest 
collector  of  titles  ever/*  I  replied.  De 
Blowitz  calls  her  the  Duchess  of  L'Esignano, 
but  she  was  also  the  Spanish  Princess  of 
Peace,  the  Princess  Godoy,  the  Marchioness 
of  Altavilla  and  the  Countess  and  Baroness 
of  Ketchendorff." 

"In  that  case/*  said  Mark,  "that  story 
about  her  dying  is  vastly  exaggerated,  for 
she  has  six  lives  coming  to  her  before  she  is 
finally  through.  But  how  and  where  did 
she  get  all  those  high-sounding  names?" 

"  Bought  'em,  of  course.  Her  last  husband, 
the  Prince  Godoy,  was  a  racetrack  tout  in 
Paris  and  they  were  married  on  his  high 
ness*  deathbed,  Auntie  engaging  to  pay 
the  funeral  expenses.  L'Esignano  and  Alta 
villa  she  likewise  married  in  extremis,  as 
lawyers  have  it.  The  Barony  and  the  Count- 
ship  she  acquired  through  her  lover,  the 
saintly  Prince  Albert,  husband  of  Victoria." 

"She  was  a  Frenchwoman,  you  said?" 

"Born  in  Paris  as  Victoire  Noel." 

Mark  Twain  stood  still  in  the  midst  of 
Printing  House  Square  and  laid  a  heavy 
hand  upon  my  arm.  "What  you  tell  me  is 
a  great  relief/*  he  said.  "I  thought  American 
girls  were  the  only  damn'  fools  paying  for 
titles." 

The  much -titled  Aunt  Rosine  didn't  die 
till  a  year  later,  but  I  believe  that  the  false 
alarm  about  her  demise,  set  down,  was  re- 

170 


sponsible,  in  part  at  least,  for  Mark's:  "Do 
They  Love  a  Lord?"  He  maintained:  "They 
all  do/'  dwelling  in  particular  upon  the 
courtesies  shown  to  Prince  Henry  in  the  U.  S. 
After  the  appearance  of  his  essay  in  "The 
North  American  Review/'  I  told  Clemens 
of  the  following  incident,  witnessed  in  Phila 
delphia. 

I  happened  to  visit  the  City  of  Brotherly 
Love  the  same  day  as  Henry  and  was  crossing 
one  of  the  downtown  squares,  when  a  con 
siderable  commotion  arose  behind:  clatter 
of  horses'  hoofs,  jingling  of  metal,  tramp  of 
oncoming  masses.  Somebody  shouted: 
"There  he  is,  going  to  the  Mayor's  office," 
as  I  was  passing  by  an  office  building  in 
course  of  construction. 

The  masons,  hodcarriers  and  other  work 
men  heard  the  cry  and  crowded  onto  the 
scaffolding  outside  the  walls.  Some  of  them 
seemed  ready  to  take  up  the  shouts  of 
welcome  emitted  here  and  there  by  the 
crowd. 

But  the  enthusiasm  for  royalty  was  cut 
short  by  a  brawny  Irishman,  planting  him 
self,  trowel  in  hand,  on  the  edge  of  the  main 
scaffold. 

"None  of  that  chin  music  here,"  he  hol 
lered;  "the  first  wan  that  hollers  hooray  for 
owld  Vic's  grandson  gets  a  throwl  full  of 
cement  down  his  red  lane,"  and  he  swung 
the  loaded  tray  defiantly. 

171 


Just  then  the  Pennsylvania  Hussars  came 
trotting  up  in  picturesque  disorder,  the  Prince 
and  city  officials  following  in  an  open  landau. 

"And  you  could  hear  the  silence,  I  bet," 
said  Mark.  "I  wish  I  had  been  there  to  see  it 
too,  particularly  if  one  of  the  chaps  had  at 
tempted  to  mutiny  against  Pat's  order.  Pat, 
I  dare  say,  would  have  licked  him  until  he 
couldn't  tell  himself  from  a  last  year's  corpse. " 


172 


MARK'S  MARTYRDOM 

"Well,  how  did  you  like  your  reception  in 
England?"  Mark  was  asked  during  his  last 
visit  there. 

"Overwhelming,  indescribable!  There  are 
no  other  words  for  it,"  he  said,  "but  let  me 
get  hold  of  Andy  (Carnegie).  His  country, 
Scotland,  used  truly  fiendish  means  for  hu 
miliating  me,  though  I  spent  a  whole  day 
riding  across  the  blamed  island — couldn't  do 
better,  for  the  train  between  Edinburgh  and 
London  wouldn't,  or  couldn't,  go  slower. 

"Well,  at  Edinburgh  I  crept  into  one  of 
those  rat-cages  they  call  railway  carriage,  first 
class,  and  opened  the  'Irish  Times,'  that  I 
bought  at  the  station.  I  kidded  myself,  hoping 
that  the  unfurling  of  that  paper  would  promote 
conversation,  or  trouble  or  something,  with 
fellow  passengers.  But  there  was  only  one, 
and  he  got  even  with  me  in  the  most  awful  and 
bloodthirsty  style.  Namely,  he  pulled  out  of 
his  valise  a  copy  of  the  'Innocents,'  in  two 
volumes,  and  after  lighting  a  pipe,  began 
reading.  I  watched  him,  first  out  of  a  corner 
of  my  eye,  then  with  the  whole  eye,  then  with 
the  pair  of  them.  Nothing  doing — that  horse 
thief  didn't  crack  a  single  smile  over  the  first 
two  hundred  and  fifty  pages. 

"After  luncheon — even  the  excellent  salmon 
was  gall  and  the  other  thing  to  me — Mr. 
Scotchman  repeated  his  torture,  heaping  more 
red-hot  coals  on  my  mane,  the  insides  of  my 


hands  and  of  my  shoes — that  is,  he  read  the 
second  story  through  likewise  without  as  much 
as  a  squint." 

And  Mark  got  up  and  left  without  another 
word. 


0 


SLANG   NOT   IN   MARK'S 
DICTIONARY 

Seldom  or  never  did  I  hear  Mark  use  slang — 
whether  he  thought  himself  above  it  in  the 
matter  of  provoking  laughter,  or  whether  he 
disliked  it,  I  can't  tell.  He  used  to  keep  the 
Berlin  or  Vienna  embassy,  or  whatever  the 
resort  happened  to  be,  in  a  roar  by  telling  of 
billiard  balls  "the  size  of  walnuts"  and  of  a 
billiard  table  "as  big  as  the  State  of  Rhode 
Island,"  but  such  a  word  as  "Biggity"  never 
escaped  him. 

An  American  "slangy"  person  says:  "I'll 
be  jiggered"  or  something.  Mark  put  that 
phrase  differently:  "  You  be  damned  if  I  didn't 
scream  like  a  wet  peacock  with  all  his  tail 
feathers  mussed. " 

The  ordinary  run  of  humorists  delight  in 
fussing  about  hotel  bills.  Mark  affected  to 
"be  mad  clean  through"  at  impositions  prac 
ticed  upon  him  by  foreigners,  and  clenched 
both  fists  as  he  remarked:  "We  paid  the  heavy 
bill,  about  six  cents. " 

If  Mark  had  used  the  slang  loved  by  the 
vaudevillians  he  would  be  as  widely  unread  in 
the  Scandinavian  countries,  in  modern  Greece 
and  in  Russia  as  are  the  latter.  "I  never 
liked  riddles  and  jaw-breakers,"  he  said  to  a 
member  of  the  firm  of  Chatto  and  Windus  in 
London  one  day,  after  the  gentleman  "had 
caught  another  foreign  country  for  him," 

175 


"but  I  guess  cannibals  and  Pollacks  alike  love 
to  be  surprised,  and  the  grotesque,  always 
unexpected,  is  surprising." 

"During  my  stay  in  Stockholm  some  one 
read  the  following  from  one  of  my  books 
(translated) :  'The  solemn  steadfastness  of  the 
deep  made  the  ship  roll  sideways/  Great 
laughter.  'And  she  kicked  up  behind!'  At 
that  the  house  shook  and  rocked  and  quivered 
with  merriment  and  my  fame  was  firmly 
established  in  Sweden.  If  I  had  told  the 
audience  that  'Her  Majesty's  dress  crept 
along  the  floor  for  three  minutes  (count  'em) 
after  the  queen  had  gone/  they  would  have 
risen  to  a  man  and  kissed  me/' 


MARK  "NO  GENTLEMAN" 

Mark  didn't  resort  to  profanity  when  he 
wanted  to  lambaste  man  or  measure.  I  once 
heard  him  say  to  Mrs.  Clemens:  "T  will  write 
him  that  'his  mind  is  all  caked  up,  that  as  an 
idiot  he  is  simply  immeasurable/ 

"And  I  will  call  him  a  snug  person  full  of 
pedantic  proclivities;  and  further,  'a  long- 
eared  animal'  (and  striking  an  attitude) — 'a 
mule  hostler  with  his  pate  full  of  axle  grease.' 

"All  right,"  said  gentle  Mrs.  Livy,  "do  so 
by  all  means,  but  take  care  not  to  send  the 
letter." 

"Livy,  dear,  let  me  get  it  off  my  chest," 
pleaded  Mark,  "for  'Hotel  Normandie,  Paris,' 
would  be  just  the  place  to  date  such  an  epistle 
from.  Don't  you  remember  the  'Madame's 
screech'  to  the  effect  that  'one  must  expect 
neither  tact  nor  delicacy  from  Mark  Twain  ? ' 

The  "Madame"  referred  to  was  Madam 
Blanc,  the  critic  of  one  of  the  chief  French 
reviews,  already  mentioned. 

"The  vagabond  and  adventurer,  who  from 
crown  to  sole  remained  a  gentleman"  (I  forget 
from  which  magazine  this  is  quoted)  fairly 
reveled  "in  the  French  Madame's  abomina 
tion  of  his  lowly  self. " 


MARK,  POETRY,  AND  ART 

Like  other  authors,  Mark  was  not  indifferent 
to  praise.  I  think  he  liked  best  an  essay  in  a 
Vienna  review  which  hailed  him  as  "the 
journalist  of  belles-lettres  who  has  made  the 
commonplaces  literary,  even  as  Emerson  ren 
dered  the  commonplaces  philosophic."  "A 
French  writer  has  accused  him  of  denying 
that  there  was  any  poetic  feeling  in  the  middle 
ages,"  continues  the  essay,  "yet  his  Joan  of 
Arc  is  the  most  wonderfully  lyric-dramatic 
prose  I  can  recall. " 

"There  are  lots  of  people  who  know  me 
better  than  I  do  myself,"  was  Mark's  com 
ment  on  the  above,  and  followed  it  up  with  a 
yarn  on  life  in  "old  Nevada,"  when  he  rode 
several  miles  behind  a  prairie  schooner  "be 
cause  of  a  red  petticoat  fluttering  in  the  breeze 
at  the  tail  end." 

"That  is,  I  thought  it  was  a  petticoat,  but 
when  I  caught  up  with  the  wagon  on  that 
spent  mud  turtle  of  mine  (my  gee-gee  went  by 
that  poetic  name)  I  found  it  was  only  a  piece 
of  burlap  displayed  for  art's  sake. " 

"Did  I  curse  ART?"  demanded  Mark, 
looking  around  the  circle. 


178 


MARK    SHEDS    LIGHT    ON    ENGLISH 
HISTORY 

We  had  set  out  to  look  at  the  rich  collections 
of  jewels,  curiosities  and  "other  loot"  (Mark's 
description)  hoarded  by  the  (late)  Hapsburgs 
in  the  immense  pile  called  Hofburg,  when  the 
author  of  "Joan  of  Arc,"  then  in  the  making, 
switched  me  off  to  another  room. 

"Let's  go  and  dig  out  the  Witch  Hammer," 
he  said.  "Wonder  whether  they  have  a  new 
edition  at  the  Imperial  Library." 

I  forget  now  which  edition  of  that  murder 
ous  book  we  examined,  but  I  do  remember 
some  of  the  figures  we  jotted  down  at  the 
librarian's  suggestion.  The  Witch  Hammer, 
that  is,  a  voluminous  "  treatise  for  discovering, 
torturing,  maiming  and  burning  witches," 
was  first  published,  we  learned,  in  1487,  and 
twenty-eight  editions  were  put  through  the 
press  during  the  fifteenth,  sixteenth  and  seven 
teenth  centuries. 

Later  Mark  listened  to  my  reading  from  the 
Latin  text  with  so  stern  a  mien  I  suggested 
that  he  looked  like  a  Grand  Inquisitor. 

"I  pity  your  ignorance,"  he  drawled,  "Tro- 
quemada  and  the  rest  didn't  think  of  being 
unhappy  re  those  auto-da-fes,  for  every  witch- 
fire  lit  by  their  orders  meant  a  warm  jingle 
in  their  own  pockets.  When  they  tortured  an 
accused  person,  the  cost  of  the  proceedings 
was  collected  by  the  sheriff,  ditto  when  they 
burned  some  old  lady,  or  a  child  maybe — it 

179 


was  all  grist  to  their  mill,  for  the  Grand  Inquis 
itor  got  a  rake-off  on  all  prosecutions,  and  in 
those  good  old  days  it  cost  more  to  break  a 
human  being  on  the  wheel  than  to  feed  him 
and  care  for  him  in  jail.  The  great  Napoleon, 
you  once  told  me,  found  some  three  hundred 
crowned  leeches  infesting  Germany  when  he 
started  to  break  up  their  little  game.  What 
do  you  suppose  they  lived  on,  those  kinglets, 
princes,  graves  and  dukes — on  the  dog  tax? 
No,  most  of  them  lived  on  the  interest  of  the 
fortunes  their  ancestors  had  accumulated  by 
prosecuting  and  burning  witches/' 

Some  years  later  Mark  related  the  story  of 
our  search  for  the  Witch  Hammer  before  a 
motley  crowd  of  litterateurs  at  Brown's  Hotel, 
London.  "Fine,"  said  Bram  Stoker,  "tell  us 
some  more;  I  have  a  short  story  on  witchcraft 
in  hand." 

"In  that  case,"  said  Mark,  "don't  forget 
Henry  VIII,  Elizabeth  and  the  first  James. 
Wife-killing  Henry  started  the  witch-burning 
business  in  ' merry'  England,  Elizabeth  re 
vived  the  sport,  and  the  son  of  Mary  Stuart, 
whose  Bible  lies  on  every  drawing-room  table 
at  home,  used  both  pen  and  axe  to  exterminate 
witches  and  'demons.'  I  read  up  closely  on 
the  subject  when  I  got  down  to  Joan  of  Arc's 
trial." 

Some  of  our  English  friends  didn't  seem 
pleased  with  Mark's  reminiscences  of  British 
intolerance.  "What  about  Salem?"  asked 
one  of  them. 

1 80 


"Oh,  Salem,"  replied  Mark,  drawing  out 
the  word  like  a  rubber  band,  "you  needn't  get 
cocky  about  Salem.  The  Massachusetts 
witchcraft  delusion  was  only  an  echo  of  your 
own  English  persecutions,  and  a  flash  in  the 
pan  at  that.  I  have  the  data  in  my  booklet 
here.  Admitted  we  fool  Americans  did  hang 
twenty-two  and  tortured  some  fifty  people 
under  the  English-German-Spanish  witch 
craft  acts — to  our  shame  and  disgrace — com 
pare  these  figures  with  the  records  of  man  and 
woman  burnings  ordered  by  your  *  bloody 
Mary'  alone.  On  the  very  morning  of  the 
day  when  the  old  cat  died,  seven  or  eight 
Britishers  were  billed  to  be  reduced  to  cinders 
at  Smithfield  (where  you  buy  your  steak  now 
adays),  and  if  the  devil  hadn't  made  room  for 
her  Majesty  in  hell  before  noon,  there  would 
have  been  so  many  more  martyrs. " 

He  turned  to  Stoker.  "Bram,"  he  said, 
"the  only  satisfactory  way  to  do  a  witchcraft 
story  is  to  filch  it  bodily  from  Balzac.  The 
Frenchman  got  the  thing  down  to  perfection 
in  one  of  his  Droll  yarns — I  know  a  shop  in  the 
Strand  where  you  can  buy  a  pirated  edition 
— reproduced  by  the  camera — for  half  a 


crown. ' 


"Hold,"  he  added,  "I  can  give  you  the 
recipe  of  the  witch  salve,  so  called.  Fisher 
and  I  dug  it  up  at  the  Berlin  Royal  Library. 
It  was  a  compound  of  hemlock,  mandragora, 
henbane  and  belladonna.  No  wonder  it  set 
persons,  thus  embalmed  all  over  the  naked 

181 


body,  crazy,  tickled  them  to  indulge  in  all 
sorts  of  insane  antics,  that  lent  themselves 
to  devilish  interpretation  at  a  period  when 
every  tenth  person  aspired  to  boom  a  religion 
of  his  own/ 


182 


MARK  TWAIN  EXPLAINS  DEAN 
SWIFT 

"I  wish  somebody  would  kick  me  for  a 
damned  Treppcnwttz"  said  Mark  Twain, 
gazing  into  a  bookseller's  shop  window  Unter 
den  Linden. 

"The  Herr  Schutzmann  (traffic  policeman) 
will  oblige;  just  say — " 

Mark  glanced  at  the  whiskered  giant  be 
striding  his  ill-shaped  cattle  at  the  intersection 
of  Friedrich  Strasse. 

"No,  thank  you,  I  won't  lese  majeste  on  a 
Friday/'  replied  Mark,  "besides,  I  don't  like 
the  cop's  boot."  (In  before-i9i8  days,  you 
need  but  say,  'Verdammt  Kaiser,'  in  Berlin, 
to  get  knocked  down,  arrested,  and  sent  up 
for  months  and  months.) 

"What's  Treppcnwfat" 

"I  didn't  know  myself  until  Harry  Thurston 
Peck  told  me.  It's  the  wisdom  that  comes  to 
you  going  down  the  stairs,  or  the  elevator, 
after  making  a  fool  of  yourself  higher  up — an 
afterthought,  as  it  were. " 

"And  what's  the  afterthought  now?" 

"See  that  book?"  (pointing),  "no,  not  that, 
the  yellowback,  by  Prof.  Borkowsky — one 
more  guy  trying  to  explain  Jonathan  Swift. 
I  forgot  when  his  Deanship  lived  and  died,  but 
they  must  have  been  at  it  for  centuries.  And 
without  examining  the  new  volume,  I  bet  I 
can  tell  its  contents:  more  highfalutin'  tommy- 
rot  about  the  Dean's  vagaries  in  erotics  and 

183 


small  beer  politics.  There  must  be  a  consider 
able  library  on  the  subject,  every  new  author 
threshing  the  old  straw  a  tenth  time,  and 
adding  mystery  trimmings  of  his  own.  I 
always  promised  myself  to  submit  my  theories 
on  Swift  and  his  harem  at  a  first-class  insanity 
shop,  but  I  forgot  to  ask  Krafft-Ebing  in 
Vienna,  and  now  I  let  Virchow  pass." 

I  was  going  to  say  something  obvious,  but 
Mark  stopped  me.  "  I  know  Virchow's  special 
line,  but  that  man  is  wise  on  every  conceivable 
subject,  and  I  am  quite  sure  he  would  have 
borne  me  out,  namely,  that  Swift's  character 
can  be  explained  on  the  theory  that  he  was  a 
Sadist  and  a  Masochist  in  one.  If  Swift,  as  he 
wrote  to  an  acquaintance,  'died  of  rage  like  a 
poisoned  rat  in  a  hole,'  I  am  sure  he  enjoyed 
it.  God  knows  that  man  gave  more  pain  to 
his  lady  loves,  Stella,  Vanessa  and  the  rest, 
than  all  the  Romeos  in  Shakespeare.  They 
say  that  he  killed  Vanessa  by  frightening  her 
to  death;  he  certainly  murdered  Stella  morally 
by  letting  her  pass  for  his  mistress.  Still  these 
two  women  and  others,  whose  names  I  forget, 
were  proud  of  the  torments  inflicted  upon 
them.  I  wish  I  had  asked  Virchow,  when  he 
invited  the  audience  to  put  questions  to  him 
at  the  end  of  the  lecture." 


184 


MARK   IN   TRAGEDY   AND    COMEDY 

We  had  lunch  with  some  of  the  Herald  boys 
at  Cafe  des  Ambassadeurs^  Champs-Elysees, 
when  Dick  Benet,  editor  of  "Dalziel's  News," 
joined  us.  Dick,  "contrary  to  his  usual 
morosity,  acted  the  gay  and  debonair/'  to 
quote  Clemens,  who  suggested  that  "he  must 
have  given  the  boss  the  toothache  by  manag 
ing  to  get  his  salary  raised  a  hundred  francs 
per  annum." 

There  was  much  hilarity  about  that,  for  we 
all  knew  "the  boss"  for  a  skinflint,  and  Mark 
told  a  succession  of  funny  stories  about  his 
own  salary  grabs  on  the  "Virginia  Enter 
prise"  and  other  impecunious  sheets.  All 
were  keenly  alive  to  the  treat,  only  Dick 
seemed  absent-minded,  pulling  out  his  watch 
every  little  while  and  keeping  an  eye  on  the 
door. 

!<  You  are  not  afraid  of  a  bum-bailiff  now/' 
suggested  Mark. 

"Neither  now,  nor  at  any  future  time," 
replied  Dick.  "Fact  is,  the  wife  promised  to 
meet  me  here  and  I  have  an  engagement  at 
two  o'clock  which  I  mustn't  miss  under  any 
circumstances  whatever. "  Our  friend  seemed 
to  be  lying  under  some  pressure  or  excite 
ment. 

At  one-fifteen  a  tall,  stylish  Frenchwoman 
entered,  and  Dick  rushed  up  to  her  with  out 
stretched  hands.  "So  glad  you  came  in 
time,"  he  murmured.  He  slurred  over  the 

185 


introductions,  drew  his  wife  on  to  the  seat 
next  to  him,  and  whispered  to  her. 

At  fifteen  minutes  to  two  (we  adduced  the 
figures  later  by  comparing  notes)  two  strangers 
in  high  silk  toppers  walked  up  to  Dick,  saying: 
"It's  time,  Monsieur." 

Dick  nodded,  rose,  bent  over  his  wife  and 
kissed  her  on  the  mouth.  Then  he  shook 
hands  all  around,  and  with  some  more  adieux 
walked  away  with  his  friends.  We  saw  him 
seated  in  a  cabriolet,  then  leave  it  abruptly. 

"Victoire,  my  love,  I  am  so  sorry/'  he  said, 
rushing  back  and  covering  his  wife's  face  with 
kisses — "so  sorry  to  leave  you." 

One  more  lingering  kiss  and  he  was  gone. 

Half  an  hour  later  Mark  and  I  passed  by 
Dalziel's  News  Bureau,  as  a  man  came  out  of 
the  counting  room  to  paste  up  "the  latest." 

"  Let's  see  what  it  is, "  said  Mark.  "  Maybe 
King  Leopold  is  dead,  and  I  mustn't  miss 
putting  on  court  mourning  for  HIM."  This 
is  what  we  read  on  the  bulletin-board: 

"Monsieur  Richard  Benet,  the  editor  of 

Dalziel's,  was  killed  in  a  duel  with at 

2:15  this  afternoon.  R.  I.  P." 

Mark  was  visibly  affected.  "That  poor 
woman,"  he  kept  saying;  "a  stroke  out  of 
the  blue.  But  Dick  felt  that  he  was  taking 
leave  of  her  for  good;  that  accounts  for  his 
repeated:  'I'm  so  sorry/  And  much  more 
to  that  effect. 

186 


To  get  Clemens'  mind  off  the  melancholy 
affair,  I  suggested  "Swithin." 

"Done/'  said  Mark,  "and  we  will  take  him 
out  to  supper,  for  I  bet  he  hasn't  got  a  sou 
marquis  in  his  jeans." 

"Swithin"  was  Mark's  pet  name  for  a 
Franco-American  writer  whose  real  name  hap 
pened  to  recall  the  legend  of  a  Saint,  a  ground 
hog,  and  several  kinds  of  weather. 

Meanwhile  the  heat  had  taken  on  a  Sahara 
hue.  "It  seems  to  me  we  are  not  walking, 
we  are  dripping,"  remarked  Clemens,  as  we 
climbed  the  four  stairs  to  the  studio.  We  had 
been  told  to  walk  right  in,  and  we  did,  acci 
dentally  upsetting  the  screen  that  separated 
the  anteroom  from  the  office. 

Tableau!  Here  was  "Swithin"  and  his 
secretary,  the  one  dictating,  the  other  thump 
ing  the  typewriter  and  both — stark  naked. 

"Don't  mention  it,"  broke  in  Mark.  " Puns 
naturalibus  is  the  only  way  to  face  this  hellish 
temperature — a  white  man's  solitary  chance 
to  get  even  with  civilization !  If  there  were  a 
bathtub,  a  few  banana  trees  and  a  fire-spitting 
mountain  around,  I  would  think  myself  in  the 
Sandwich  Islands. 

"Talking  of  sandwiches,"  he  added,  "hustle 
into  your  tailor-mades  and  come  out  for  a  bite. 
You  must  be  fearfully  hungry — working  on  a 
day  like  this?" 

"Swithin"  didn't  have  to  be  told  twice.  He 
dashed  into  the  adjoining  room  for  his  clothes, 
but  returned  after  a  little  while,  still  en  nature^ 

187 


and  swearing  like  the  whole  Flanders  army. 
He  searched  presses,  drawers,  nooks  and  cor 
ners  with  hands  and  eyes. 

"Anything  missing?"  mocked  Mark. 

"Only  my  duds — I  bet  those  confounded 
roommates  of  mine — (followed  a  string  of 
epithets  that  wouldn't  look  well  in  print) 
stole  and  pawned  them,  for  they  had  neither 
cigarette  nor  lunch  money  this  morning." 

"Come  to  think,"  put  in  the  secretary,  "I 
saw  Monsieur  Hector  leave  with  a  bundle." 

"My  jeans,  coat  and  vest,"  shrieked 
"Swithin,"  tearing  his  hair,  while  Mark 
writhed  with  laughter. 

"And  there  were  fifteen  or  twenty  sous  in  an 
inside  pocket  besides,"  moaned  "Swithin." 

"I  know  Monsieur  Hector's  hang-out," 
said  the  secretary,  "and  if  you  like  I  will  go 
and  choke  the  pawn  tickets  out  of  the  pair." 

"Couldn't  do  better  if  you  tried,"  opined 
Mark,  "for  no  doubt  by  this  time  they  have 
devoured  the  proceeds  of  their  brigandage. 
Hurry,  before  they  sell  the  tickets." 

We  found  Hector  and  his  brother-bandit 
behind  a  magnum  of  fake  champagne,  gour- 
mandizing  at  the  Dead  Cat,  a  newly  opened 
restaurant  destined  to  become  famous  in 
Bohemia. 

"Sure,"  they  said,  "we  borrowed  old  Swith- 
in's  old  clothes,  but  expected  to  bring  them 
back  before  seven.  We  are  now  waiting  for  the 
angel  who  promised  to  relieve  our  financial 
distress,  which  is  only  momentary,  of  course. " 

188 


They  gave  up  the  tickets  willingly  enough, 
and  we  repaired  to  Mont  de  Piefe  in  Rue  Lepic. 

"Mountain  of  Pity — a  queer  name  for  a 
hock  shop,"  said  Mark  when  I  related  the 
redemption  of  Swithin's  clothes.  "I  once 
knew  a  three-hundred-pound  Isaac  in  'Frisco, 
but  that  is  another  story. " 


189 


"AMBITION  IS  A  JADE  THAT  MORE 
THAN  ONE  MAN  CAN  RIDE" 

We  had  been  talking  about  changing  one's 
luck  at  the  Eccentric  Club,  London,  and  Mark 
said:  "All  is  personal  effort,  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  anything  interfering  for  one's 
advantage  or  the  opposite." 

"Guess  you  are  about  right,"  said  Stoker. 
"There  was  Loie  Fuller,  an  indifferent  sou- 
brette  before  she  became  the  goddess  of  beauty 
and  chained  Anatole  France  and  the  rest  to 
her  chariot.  I  remember  meeting  her  one 
afternoon  in  the  Strand,  looking  for  a  cable 
office.  Only  a  few  hours  previous  I  had  heard 
that  poor  Loie  was  on  her  uppers,  her  manager 
having  cheated  her,  leaving  her  penniless  in 
Berlin.  And,  worse  luck,  I  didn't  know  a 
thing  she  could  do  in  London,  or  even  the 
provinces,  just  then.  That,  you  can  imagine, 
made  me  feel  quite  gawky." 

"Well,  you  had  a  right  to  be  a  sob  sister," 
interpolated  Mark. 

"She  didn't  give  me  the  chance,  not  she," 
emphasized  Bram,  "for,  grabbing  me  by  the 
arm,  with  tears  rolling  down  her  cheeks,  she 
whispered  in  a  choked  voice:  "Father  is  dead, 
Father  is  dead!  Lend  me  ten  shillings  to  cable 
to  New  York,  please."  She  added:  'Poor 
Father.  But  now  I  will  succeed,  /  swear  //, 
Father.' 

"And  two  or  three  weeks  later  she  created 
the  serpentine  dance,  earning  such  blurbs  as 

190 


'  the  chastest  and  most  expressive  of  dancers, 
who  restored  to  us  the  lost  wonders  of  Greek 
mimicry.' 

"I  hear  she  is  about  to  open  her  own  theatre 
in  Paris  now,"  announced  the  Standard  critic. 

"That's  the  stuff,"  said  Mark.  "Loie,  like 
myself — both  red-headed — knew  that  ambi 
tion  is  a  horse  that  more  than  one  can  ride. 
I  grabbed  that  idea  'way  back  in  the  seventies 
when  Artemus  Ward  came  down  lecturing 
Virginia  way.  Art  was  a  success  and  I  liked 
the  lordly  nonchalance  with  which  he  spent 
two  or  three  hundred  dollars  on  a  tear.  I 
helped  him  spend  plenty,  I  assure  you,  but 
when  Art  and  the  brown  taste  in  my  mouth 
had  gone,  I  took  stock. 

"  'Sam,'  I  said  to  myself,  quite  familiar- 
like,  'Sam,  your  mental  adipose  is  as  good  as 
his,  and  in  originality  you  can  beat  him  dead. ' 

"After  these  encouraging  remarks,  I  set  to 
work  making  good,"  concluded  Mark. 


191 


MARK  AS  A  TRANSLATOR 

Mark  conquered  Germany  before  he  became 
one  of  the  favorite  literary  sons  of  Austria. 
"I  often  wonder  that  they  take  to  my  brand 
of  humor  so  well/'  he  told  me  more  than  once 
in  Vienna— "I  mean  AFTER  MY  GERMAN 
TRIUMPHS,  for  if  Vienna  Bookland  hates 
anything  worse  than  German  Bookland,  I 
haven't  come  across  the  likes  of  it.  Each 
capital  thinks  itself  a  Boston  and  each 
calls  the  other  Kalamazoo,  or  dead  Indian 
Town. 

"But  I'm  not  ungrateful,"  continued  Mark, 
"and  to  prove  it,  I  studied  hard  and  estab 
lished  the  identity  of  the  fatherlandish  author 
whom  both  Vienna  and  Berlin  admired 
(though  nobody  reads  him,  of  course): 
Goethe." 

"Goethe  was  Englished  before  I  tackled 
him,  but  I  happened  on  a  passage  in  Faust 
that,  it  seemed  to  me,  was  not  done  justice  to. 
So  I  summoned  the  family  to  a  powwow  and 
between  us,  and  a  heap  of  dictionaries,  we 
rendered  the  disputed  and  immortal  lines 
'thus  classic': 

"  'What  hypocrites  and  such  can't  do  without — 
Cheese  it — ne'er  mention  it  aloud.' 

"Bayard"  (Taylor)  "would  have  burst  with 
envy  if  he  had  lived  long  enough  to  see  how 


192 


happily  I  interpreted  Goethe  without  itching 
for  translator's  laurels  or  royalties/' 

"Let's  see  the  original,  Mark." 

"Here  it  is: 

"  'Man  darf  es  nicht  vor  keuschen  Ohren  nennen, 
Was  keusche  Hertzen  nicht  entbehren  konnen. ' 

"  Vers  libre  with  a  vengeance,  eh  ? "  chuckled 
Mark.  "And  why  in  thunder  shouldn't  that 
mean  verse  liberally  handled?" 

"  If  I  translated  your  version  of  Goethe  back 
into  German,  do  you  suppose  the  Fatherland- 
ers  would  understand  it?" 

"No,"  said  honest  Mark,  "but  I  do  under 
stand  their  translations  of  my  lingo — I  am  told 
they  make  me  appear  like  a  native  German 
writer,  in  fact  Moritz  Busch  called  me  the 
most  translatable  of  foreign  authors,  to  my 
face — but  Goethe  was  a  poet,  and  a  prose  man, 
like  me,  can  never  do  justice  to  a  poetry  man 
of  Goethe's  distinction.  Look  at  these  Ger 
man  translations  of  Shakespeare — they  think 
them  classic — they  get  my  eyes  in  flood  with 
laughter." 


MARK  IN  ENGLAND 

On  another  page  I  have  jotted  down  some 
sayings  of  Mark's  relating  why  he  "stead 
fastly  refused"  to  bull  the  French  and  Italian 
literary  markets.  That  in  England  it  was 
different,  goes  without  saying,  and  George 
Moore  once  explained  Mark's  English  popu 
larity  to  me. 

"It's  his  peculiar  power  of  presenting  pa 
thetic  situations  without  slush,"  insisted  "the 
last  Victorian"  in  his  manner  of  finality. 

Mark  was  visibly  tickled  when  I  read  the 
Moore  estimate  from  the  cuff  on  which  I  had 
jotted  it  down. 

He  pondered  a  short  while  on  "the  adjec 
tives,"  then  drawled  slowly:  "The  English 
are  good  sports,  you  know. " 

Here  are  a  few  more  opinions  of  English 
men  of  letters  which  I  gathered  off  and  on. 

Davison  Dalziel,  M.  P.,  editor  of  'The 
Standard,"  London:  "I  agree  with  'The 
Spectator'  that  Mark  Twain  is  the  most  pop 
ular  writer  in  the  English  tongue  because  he 
added  more  plentifully  and  more  generously 
to  the  gayety  of  the  empire  of  our  language 
than  any  other  author,  living  or  dead. " 

Moberly  Bell,  late  editor  of  "The  Times," 
London  (in  winter  of  1899):  "Mark  Twain 
succeeded  with  us  because  he  is  a  fearless 
upholder  of  all  that  is  clean,  honest,  noble  and 
straightforward  in  letters  as  well  as  in  life. 

194 


He  once  told  me  that  he  '  qualified  as  the  first 
yellow  journalist. '  I  wish  to  God  he  had  re 
mained  the  first  and  only  one." 

That  was  before  Mr.  Bell  negotiated  for  the 
sale  of  "The  Times"  to  Lord  Northcliffe. 

William  Heinemann,  the  late  famous  Lon 
don  publisher,  who  could  never  get  hold  of  any 
of  Mark  Twain's  books  for  publication: 

"An  author  as  well  beloved  as  he  is  popular 
and  famous.  Wit,  scholar,  orator,  millionaire 
perhaps  "  (that  was  before  the  Webster  period) , 
"yet  I  have  seen  a  letter  of  his  in  which  he 
stated  point  blank:  'I  would  rather  be  a  pilot 
than  anything  else  in  the  world,'  and  that 
letter  was  penned  after  two  hundred  thousand 
copies  of  *  Innocents  Abroad'  had  been  sold." 


WHY   MARK  WAS   UNCOMFORTABLE 

IN  THE  KING  OF  SWEDEN'S 

PRESENCE 

"And  how  did  you  like  the  King  of  Swe 
den?"  I  heard  Lord  Roberts  ask  Clemens  at 
the  Army  and  Navy  Club,  one  afternoon. 

"Well,  frankly,  if  I  must  suffer  myself  to 
have  intercourse  with  kings,  I  prefer  the 
Prince  of  Wales/'  replied  Mark. 

Then  somebody  told  a  story  about  the 
Swedish  Majesty's  last  sojourn  in  Norway. 
There,  at  a  railway  station,  Oscar  ran  against 
a  crusty  old  farmer  who  thought  himself  a  lot 
better  than  a  mere  king  and  kept  his  hat  on. 

"Don't  you  know  enough  to  bare  your  head 
in  the  presence  of  the  King?"  demanded 
Oscar. 

"You  bare  your  head  and  I'll  bare  mine," 
replied  the  farmer.  "  My  family  has  been  here 
a  great  many  hundred  years  longer  than 
yours." 

Thereupon  Oscar  got  so  enraged  he  knocked 
the  farmer's  hat  off  with  a  sweep  of  his  cane 
and  if  bystanders  hadn't  interfered  the  King 
would  have  been  pummeled  "handsome" 
then  and  there. 

"I  am  glad  I  doffed  my  hat  before  Oscar 
came  in,"  said  Mark. 


196 


MARK'S  IDEA  OF  HIGH  ART 

"This  here  earth  is  governed  like  a  military 
despoty,"  said  Mark  Twain  when  we  were 
sitting  outside  a  Ringstrasse  restaurant  in 
Vienna  one  afternoon.  He  was  eyeing  the 
procession  of  army  officers,  with  pretty  girls 
upon  their  arms,  passing  to  and  fro. 

"And  if  you  had  the  ordering  of  things, 
would  your  soul  have  meandered  into  one  of 
these  jackanapes  in  monkey  jackets  and  cor 
sets,  and  czackos  and  busbies  and  things?" 
inquired  Susan,  the  wit's  witty  young 
daughter. 

"No,  darling,  but  I  would  have  loved  to 
live  in  the  time  of  Shakespeare  and  Queen 
Elizabeth,  the  best  dressed  period  of  the  world. 
You  know  I  like  color  and  flummery  and  all 
such  things — I  was  born  red-headed — maybe 
that  accounts  for  my  passion  for  the  gorgeous 
and  ornamental." 

"Tell  the  company  about  the  riot  of  colors 
you  delight  in,"  said  Susan. 

"I  saw  it  only  once,"  replied  Mark,  "and  it 
was  rather  uncomfortable,  even  painful,  to  the 
other  creature,  namely,  a  tortoise-shell  cat 
that  accidentally  had  dropped  into  a  tomato 
stew.  As  pussy  tried  to  get  out,  pawing  like 
the  baby  after  the  Ivory  soap,  there  was  a 
display  of  rainbows,  spectrums,  chromatics, 
prisms,  pigments,  and  plain  everyday  paints 
and  stains  such  as  I  have  run  across  in  a  few 
Italian  picture  galleries  only. 

197 


He  picked  up  a  copy  of  the  "New  York 
Herald/'  lying  on  the  table.  "There's  our 
friend  George  in  New  York,"  he  said,  "having 
more  trouble  with  that  pesky  French  brother- 
in-law  of  his.  The  little  Paris  fortune  hunter 
has  already  cost  his  wife's  estate  fifteen  or 
twenty  million  francs  and — no  returns  out 
side  of  a  few  babies.  Yet  French  brother-in- 
law  could  make  a  tall  income  if  he  were  put  to 
'work  right,'  as  they  say  in  the  wild  and 
woolly,  for  he  has  a  most  tremendous  eye  for 
color  effects,  that  chap.  If  he  were  my  broth 
er-in-law,  I  would  starve  the  cuss  into  becom 
ing  a  man-milliner,  the  first  of  the  world. 
That's  what  he  could  be,  and  ought  to  be  with 
clever  management. 

"My  word,"  continued  Mark,  "you  ought 
to  see  him  drive  in  state  in  the  Bois  de  Bou 
logne.  When  I  first  clapped  eyes  on  his 
flunkies  and  outriders,  in  their  liveries,  rich 
yet  soft  in  color  effects,  I  almost  yearned  to  be 
one  of  them  for  the  sake  of  their  fine  togs." 

Indeed,  sensational  clothes  were  always 
Mark's  hobby.  Hence  the  white  suits  he 
wore  in  his  reclining  days,  and  the  sealskin 
coat,  with  the  fur  outside,  that  adorned  him 
in  his  days  of  youthful  glory.  I  am  quite 
sure  he  would  have  gone  to  bed  in  his  Oxford 
mantle  and  cap  if  he  had  had  more  than  one 
of  each,  and  the  passing  of  his  red  hair  was  a 
real  grievance  to  him,  he  told  Gyp,  the  French 
novelist  whom  he  called,  "warm,  yet  not 
torrid." 

198 


MARK  MEETS  KING  LEOPOLD— 
ALMOST 

A  man  with  a  top  hat,  long  gray  whiskers 
and  a  rapid-looking  young  woman  on  his  arm 
came  out  of  the  Metropole  Hotel  in  Paris  as 
we  passed. 

"Poor  seedy  beggar/'  said  Mark,  "I  won 
der  whether  he  would  object  to  a  five-sous 
piece?"  And  he  put  his  hand  in  his  pocket. 

"Hold,"  I  said.  "That's  King  Leopold  and 
Cleo  de  Merode. " 

"Impossible,  with  that  get-up,"  objected 
Mark. 

"Get-up?"  I  repeated.  "Kings  always 
wear  frayed  jeans  when  they  travel  incog." 

"In  that  case,  go  and  smash  the  old  beast. 
You  are  younger  than  I,  and  heavier,  too." 

At  the  moment  when  Mark  extended  this 
thoughtful  invitation,  Swithins  of  the  "New 
York  Herald"  hailed  us.  "Look  at  that 
chap,"  he  said,  pointing  to  the  person  I  had 
called  his  Belgian  Majesty;  "he  is  the  model 
who  sat  for  L'Assiette  au  Beurre's  caricature 
of  King  Leopold  as  Saint  Anthony.  Let's  go 
inside  and  get  a  copy." 

Mark  bought  a  dozen  or  more  to  send  to 
American  friends.  The  caricature  by  D'Os- 
toya,  if  I  recollect  rightly,  was  an  excellent 
likeness  of  both  the  King  and  of  the  beggar 
we  had  run  across. 

"Neither  would  take  his  hat  off  to  Roths 
child,"  said  Mark;  "Leopold,  because  his 

199 


Congo  savageries  had  made  him  enormously 
rich,  the  beggar  because  he  wouldn't  know  the 
richest  man  from  a  mere  million-pauper,  like 


me/ 


D'Ostoya's  cartoon  represented  Leopold 
in  monk's  habit,  undergoing  one  of  the  several 
temptations  immortalized  by  Flaubert's  great 
novel.  But  it  wasn't  the  Queen  of  Sheba  who 
called — rather  Mrs.  Fat-and-Forty  minus  fur 
belows  and  things.  No  wonder  Leopold, 
being  artistically  inclined,  looks  annoyed. 

"  Watch  the  virtuous  indignation  oozing 
out  of  the  old  rascal,"  said  Mark.  "The  editor 
of  the  *  Ladies'  Home  Journal,'  asked  to  do 
an  essay  on  bruisers  for  the  *  Police  Gazette/ 
couldn't  be  shocked  any  harder. " 

When  I  told  him  about  an  article  on  Leopold 
I  had  done  for  the  "New  York  World,"  which 
caused  a  Montreal  editor,  who  stole  it,  to  be 
jugged  for  libel  ("Six  months,"  said  the  judge 
of  literature),  Mark  grew  enthusiastic. 

"Was  that  yours?"  he  cried.  "Good  boy! 
Come  along  and  I  will  buy  you  dinner  at  one 
of  those  places  where  they  are  ashamed  to 
put  the  price  of  dishes  a  la  carte  because  they 
hate  to  confess  that  they  charge  less  than 
1,000  francs  a  pea." 


200 


SIZING  UP  OF  ARISTOCRACY 
BY  MARK 

At  one  of  the  many  splendid  dinner  parties 
at  the  house  of  Minister  Walter  Phelps,  the 
strange  case  of  Prince  and  Princess  XXX  of  a 
once  sovereign  family  had  come  in  for  a  lot  of 
discussion.  Their  highnesses  stood  convicted 
of  hotel  looting,  yet  on  account  of  the  imagi 
nary  coronet  that  topped  their  escutcheon, 
they  were  expected  to  go  scot-free,  "for  every 
body  agreed  that  her  *  Grace'  was  plainly  a 
kleptomaniac. " 

"Don't  you  think  so,  Mr.  Clemens?"  de 
manded  an  old  countess,  coquetting  with  the 
last  tooth  in  her  mouth. 

"I  am  no  expert,"  replied  Mark.  "All  I 
know  is  that  the  disease  attacks  only  the  high 
born,  as  you  call  them,  and  the  well-to-do." 

As  on  this  occasion  all  of  Mr.  Phelps'  native 
guests  were  more  or  less  "high  born,"  and 
impecunious,  that  remark  of  the  Sage  of  a 
Hundred  Stories  put  the  quietus  on  aristoc 
racy-propaganda  during  the  rest  of  the  dinner 
and  later,  in  the  smoking  room,  Mr.  Phelps' 
American  guests  were  left  quite  to  themselves. 

"  I  hope  I  wasn't  rude  to  that  blue-blooded 
one,"  said  Mark,  "but  excusing  thievery  be 
cause  the  thief  happens  to  have  a  handle  to  his 
or  her  name,  gets  my  goat  on  the  instant. 
Now"  (looking  at  me)  "give  us  the  real  story 
of  that  looting  business  by  High  Lifers,  so  we 
can  discuss  it  intelligently.  Its  general  gist  I 

201 


got  from  the  German  papers,  but  lack  details. " 

I  gave  the  latter  as  follows :  The  Prince  XXX 
was  a  second  son,  consequently  always  hard 
up.  The  Princess  had  no  money  of  her  own 
either,  but  in  place  of  that  a  soaring  ambition. 
Food  positively  disagreed  with  her  every  time 
she  took  it  off  mere  china  or  stoneware.  She 
must  have  silver — 

"Or  bust — "  said  Mark.  "I  made  out  that 
much." 

Well,  to  get  the  plate  and  plenty  of  it,  their 
highnesses  engaged  in  a  coaching  tour  of  the 
Fatherland,  stopping  nightly  at  a  different 
hotel.  And  at  each  hostelry  her  Grace  swiped 
all  the  silver  she  could  carry  off,  milk  jugs, 
souvenir  spoons  and  forks  and  dish  covers, 
napkin  rings  and  similar  knicknacks. 

"And  these  swipings  she  sent  to  her  ances 
tral  halls,  Castle  Teufelsdroekh, "  added  Mark, 
"where,  under  the  skillful  stylus  of  an  en 
graver,  the  low  hotel  markings  disappeared 
to  make  room  for  the  princely  coat-of-arms. 
But  here's  the  pretty  how-do-you-do  about 
the  scapegoat: 

"A  servant  caught  her  Grace  at  the  game 
and  gave  information  to  the  police.  The 
police  promptly  arrested  the  informant  as  a 
material  witness  and  submitted  to  their  high 
nesses  that,  at  some  future  date,  they  might 
graciously  deign  to  appear  in  court  to  answer 
the  wretch's  foul  insinuations." 

Followed  a  lengthy  discussion,  embroidered 
with  execrating  reflections  on  justice  as  han- 


202 


died  in  the  Fatherland,  Mark  quite  surpassing 
himself  in  juicy  invectives.  After  a  while 
other  subjects  came  up,  and  Clemens  retired 
to  a  desk  in  the  corner  and  began  writing 
furiously  on  the  backs  of  stray  envelopes  he 
fished  from  the  wastebasket.  He  scribbled 
and  scratched  for  about  ten  minutes,  then  got 
up  and  read  us  the  following: 

POETIC  SUMMARY  OF  THE  CASE  OF  THE  PRINCE, 
THE  PRINCESS  AND  THE  WAITER 

The  Prince  knew  naught  of  wifey's  doings. 
The  Princess  is  a  kleptomanic; 
But  their  accuser,  waiter  Muller, 
To  jail  with  that  low  brute  satanic! 


203 


THE  BALD-HEADED  WOMAN 

Mark  called  at  the  "New  York  Herald" 
office  in  London  one  day  when  a  cable  came 
over  the  wire,  describing  the  awful  punishment 
visited  by  the  Czar  (Alexander)  on  the  mis 
tress  of  one  of  the  Grand  Dukes.  The  lady 
had  been  ambushed,  carried  off  to  a  hair- 
dressing  establishment  during  the  dark  hours 
of  the  night  and  there  robbed  of  her  abundant 
locks.  In  fact,  her  head  was  shaved  a  la  bil 
liard  ball. 

"Very  ingenious/'  mused  Mark,  "for  who 
would,  or  could,  love  a  bald-headed  woman? 
They  do  things  neatly  in  Russia,  anyhow.  I 
remember  a  devilish  joke  the  great  Catherine 
played  on  a  rival.  She  had  her  yanked  out  of 
a  quadrille,  muzzled,  and  spirited  into  the 
basement.  There  she  was  whipped  good  and 
hard  with  switches  soaked  twelve  hours  in 
vinegar  and  salt.  Then  back  to  the  ballroom 
and  *  dance,  you  hussy,  and  smile,  or  you  get 
another  dose.' 


204 


WHEN  A  PUBLISHER  DINES  AND 
WINES  YOU 

Mark,  unlike  many  authors,  was  always  on 
excellent  terms  with  his  publishers.  He  always 
had  a  good  word  for  the  Harpers,  particularly 
"  the  scholarly  Henry  J. "  (since  dead),  Chatto 
and  Windus,  George  Harvey,  Baron  Tauch^ 
nitz  and  the  rest,  but  James  R.  Osgood  of 
Boston  (later  of  London)  he  loved. 

"You  lucky  dog,"  he  said  to  me  during  my 
first  visit  to  the  "sausage  room,"  at  the  Hotel 
Royal,  Berlin.  "To  pal  up  with  Osgood  is  a 
stroke  of  good  luck  that  you  hardly  deserve. 
Why — "  (speaking  very  slowly,  as  if  hunting 
for  words),  "Osgood  is  that  rara  avis  among 
publishers  who  will  invite  you  to  lunch  or 
dinner  or  to  a  box  at  the  Gaiety  without 
tampering  in  the  least  with  your  royalty 
accounts. 

"It  isn't  always  thus  in  the  'profesh,'  you 
know.  Speaking  of  the  profesh  in  particular, 
there  was  Jimmy  Powers  in  New  York,  a  risinp 
comedian,  indeed  rising  very  rapidly.  He  had 
jumped  from  200  a  week  to  500,  when  a  new 
managerial  aspirant  came  along,  and  offered 
him  a  tremendous  raise,  a  sort  of  Chimborazo 
article,  it  was  to  be. 

"Jimmy  cottoned  to  the  man's  palaver  like 
a  donkey  scenting  a  barrel  full  or  nice,  juicy 
thistles,  a  pincushion  perfecto,  each  one,  and 
promised  to  go  eating  with  him,  a  great  con 
cession  on  his  part,  for  Jimmy  had  lost  his  own 

205 


appetite,  found  a  boa  constrictor's,  and  was 
ashamed  of  his  big,  lumbering  appetite. 

"  Well,  they  rendezvoused  at  old  Martin's  on 
Tenth  Street  and  Fifth  Avenue,  then  the  most 
recherche  meal  joint  in  town.  It  happened,  by 
the  way,  at  the  period  when  the  deadly  table 
d'hote  imposition  was  just  beginning  to 
sprout. 

"Jimmy  had  never  faced  that  sort  of  jaw 
music  and  knew  no  more  about  l  entree s^ 
'poisson,9  'legumes/  etc.,  than  the  average 
Irish  waiter's  wife.  Up  to  then  his  dinner  had 
consisted  invariably  of  steak,  murphies  and 
pie — the  embarrassment  of  courses  described 
in  more  or  less  pigeon-French  on  the  Martin 
menu,  therefore,  bewildered  and  frightened 
him.  When  he  heard  the  new  manager  say 
over  the  anchovies,  cold  slaw  and  pickled  sar 
dines:  'Well,  Jimmy,  how  would  a  thousand 
a  week  suit  you?'  Powers  had  only  strength 
to  ejaculate:  'The  Lord  preserve  us!' 

"The  fried  'English'  sole  de-Long-Branch 
with  drawn  butter  and  capers  on  the  side  was 
so  delicious,  Jimmy  didn't  perceive  the  slight 
discrepancy  in  figures  when  the  manager  re 
peated  the  question  in  this  fashion:  'How 
would  you  like  to  draw  a  cool  nine  hundred  a 
week.  Jimmy?' 

'It's  done/  said  Jimmy,  attacking  his 
third  tumbler  of  red  ink.  '  I  can  keep  a  hoss 
on  that,  can't  I?' 

"  'And  marry  Lillian  Russell — what  a  team 
you  two  would  make, '  seconded  the  manager. 

206 


"Well,  to  cut  a  long  story  short,  that  ras 
cally  manager  did  the  boy  out  of  a  hundred 
with  every  succeeding  course,  and  when  finally 
he  pulled  a  fountain  pen  on  him,  Jimmy  signed 
his  laughter-provoking  powers  away  for  five 
hundred  and  twenty-five  dollars  a  week. 
Subtract  five- twenty-five  from  a  thousand 
and  you  will  find  that  Jimmy's  one  dollar  meal 
netted  the  manager  exactly  $24,700  per 
annum.  Neat  piece  of  work,  eh  ? " 

Mark's  admiration  for  the  fair-dealing  Os- 
good  was  reflected  in  his  own  treatment  of 
General  Grant.  He  not  only  paid  Grant 
double  the  royalties  a  rival  publisher  had  of 
fered,  but  actually  wrote  out  to  Grant  the 
largest  check  any  author  ever  received  from 
a  publishing  house  up  to  that  time. 

Yet  in  the  numerous  discussions  of  royalties, 
authorship  and  the  publishing  business  which 
he  conducted  in  my  hearing,  he  never  men 
tioned  the  generosity  he  had  displayed  to 
wards  the  old  boy.  Poetry  was  Mark's  weak 
ness,  or  rather  his  ambition  to  dabble  in  poetry 
was;  he  had  no  other  small  vices  to  shock  his 
friends. 


207 


MARK  IN  POLITICS 

The  chief  regret  of  Mark's  literary  life  was 
that  "folks  felt  disappointed  unless  tickled'' 
by  his  writings.  Joan  of  Arc  was  his  first  serious 
attempt,  but  when  he  entered  national  and 
New  York  City  politics — against  Elaine  and 
Tammany  respectively — he  was  so  much  in 
earnest  they  had  to  hire  Bob  Davis  to  follow 
up  his  speeches  with  a  few  funny  remarks. 

"Throwing  acorns  before  the  swine/'  Mark 
called  it.  ("Acorn  "  was  the  name  of  the  anti- 
Tammany  organization).  "Bob  had  better 
can  that  stuff  and  sell  it  to  the  Saturday  Even 
ing  Post.  They  will  fall  for  it,  all  right." 


208 


MARK  ON  "ROYAL  HONORS" 

Mark  and  I  were  walking  down  the  Linden, 
Berlin,  when  a  royal  carriage,  easily  distin 
guished  for  its  well-known  breed  of  horses  and 
livery,  passed  us.  When  it  drew  near  the 
"Foot  Guards/*  a  drum  and  fife  corps  and 
half  a  hundred  soldiers,  under  a  lieutenant, 
rushed  out,  stood  at  attention  and  made  a 
frightful  racket. 

Mark  remained  glued  to  the  spot  at  the  first 
sound  of  the  "royalist  propaganda" —his  de 
scription — and  eyed  the  spectacle  with  a  mix 
ture  of  amazement  and  disgust  written  all 
over  his  genial  face. 

"That  carriage  was  empty ^  he  observed, 
after  a  lot  of  staring  and  pulling  at  his  mous 
tache. 

"  What's  the  difference?  If  it  were  full  of 
princes  there  would  be  a  void — somewhere," 
I  replied. 

" Thanks  awfully,"  said  Mark,  impatiently. 
"/  was  once  greeted  by  fife  and  drums  and 
thought  it  the  most  tremendous  honor  ever 
paid  to  a  writing  person.  And  now  I  see  they 
do  as  much  for  an  empty  carriage,  when  there 
is  a  coat  of  arms  on  the  door. 

"Yes,  I  got  so  inflated  with  the  reverse  of 
modesty  when  the  boys  in  red  were  tickling 
the  veal-skin  for  me  and  worked  their  merry 
flutes,  I  well  nigh  bust  off  the  buttons  of  my 
Prince  Albert.  It  happened  in  Ottawa  when 
I  was  visiting  the  Governor  General,  the  Mar- 

209 


quis  of  Lome,  and  come  to  think  of  it,  I  was 
riding  in  one  of  Lome's  carriages.  When  we 
neared  the  Government  House,  the  guards 
tumbled  out  like  mad,  the  drummer  boys 
worked  like  windmills  in  a  gale  and  the  fifes 
like  steam  calliopes.  Sure,  I  felt  like  a  hundred 
and  fifteen  degrees  in  the  shade  and  I  must 
have  walked  into  the  hall  with  the  strut  of 
Larry  Barrett  playing  the  Ghost  in  Hamlet. 
It  was  the  proudest  moment  of  my  life 
then  —  and  now  I  see  it  was  all  bosh  and 
balderdash." 

Speaking  of  those  Canadian  days,  Mark 
vehemently  rebuked  me  when  I  suggested 
that  the  Marquis  of  Lome  was  "a  prosy 


ass." 


"But  I  admit  it's  embarrassing  to  visit  in  a 
family  where  the  head  of  the  house  is  a  mere 
Lord,  while  the  wife  is  kowtowed  to  as  her 
Royal  Highness.  Mixes  one  up  so,  and  I 
think  that  in  my  perplexity  I  once  or  twice 
said  a  Lord  too  many,  namely,  'Oh  Lord,  Oh 
Lord.'  I  never  was  boss  in  my  own  house, 
but  I  like  other  men  to  be  the  he-brute  for  fair. 
At  Ottawa  I  recalled  a  hundred  times  Lola 
Montez,  the  girl  who  started  the  revolution 
in  Munich  by  wearing  the  breeches  at  the 
Palace. 

"  'I  am  the  master  here,'  shouted  King 
Louis,  during  one  of  their  rows. 

"  'And  I  am  the  mistress,  don't  you  forget 
that,'  replied  Lola. 

210 


"Now,  Lola  was  only  a  common  baggage, 
strolling  actor-folks'  bairn/'  added  Mark. 
' 'Think  of  the  advantages  royal  birth  gives  to 
a  woman.  Such  a  one,  even  if  born  without 
legs,  would  wear  the  breeches  and  boss  the 
show." 


211 


AMERICAN  WOMEN  THE  PRETTIEST 

In  another  place  I  have  recorded  Mark's 
high  opinion  of  the  beauty  of  the  Vienna 
women  and  of  the  lack  of  beauty  he  encoun 
tered  at  the  Berlin  court. 

As  we  were  walking  home  from  a  reception 
given  by  Mr.  and  Mrs.  John  Jackson  (John 
Jackson,  of  New  Jersey,  first  secretary  of  the 
Berlin  Legation)  Mark  said:  "It's  like  looking 
up  at  the  Horse  Shoe  in  the  Metropolitan 
Opera  House  to  see  those  pretty  American 

g'rls,  Mrs.  Jackson,  Mrs.  Bingham  (wife  of 
aptain,  later  General  Bingham)  and  Marion 
Phelps  (daughter  of  Minister  William  Walter 
Phelps).  Marion  is  blonde  and  inclined  to  be 
statuesque,  like  the  native  women  here,  but 
oh,  the  difference!  As  in  the  case  of  Mrs. 
Jackson  and  Mrs.  Bingham,  one  sees  at  a 
glance  that  Nature  squandered  more  refine 
ment  on  her  than  on  a  thousand  Berlin  women, 
royal  and  otherwise. 

"They  say  God  made  man  in  his  effigy.  I 
don't  know  about  that,  but  I'm  quite  sure 
that  he  put  a  lot  of  divinity  into  the  American 
girl." 


212 


WHERE  TAY  PAY  ISN'T  TAY  PAY 

"Tay  Pay's  Weekly/'  said  Mark,  proffering 
sixpence  at  a  Cork  news  stand. 

The  woman  behind  the  counter  looked  at 
him  inquiringly.  "New  paper.  Sir?  Never 
heard  of  it." 

"Never  heard  of  Tay  Pay  ?  How  long  have 
you  been  in  the  business?"  asked  Mark. 

"Ever  since  I  was  thirteen,  and  I'm  past 
sixty  now." 

Mark  shook  his  head  and  started  to  walk 
away,  when  he  saw  a  copy  of  the  paper  nailed 
up  on  the  outside.  "I  knew  you  were  mis 
taken,"  he  said  to  the  woman.  "There  is  the 
paper  I  want.  See  the  title:  'Tay  Pay,'  as 
large  as  life. " 

"Pardon  me,"  said  the  newswoman.  "We 
call  it  Tee  Fee's  Weekly  here." 

"You  do,  do  you?"  cried  Mark.  "Damned 
if  I  ever  again  try  to  talk  Irish  in  Ireland." 


213 


THE   MAN   WHO   DIDN'T   GET   USED 
TO  HANGING 

At  the  Eccentric  Club  somebody  said: 
"Man  gets  used  to  everything  except  hang 
ing/'  when  Mark  interrupted  him:  "Hold/* 
he  drawled.  "When  I  was  last  in  London" 
(this  was  in  1907)  "one  of  the  'Savages'  re 
lated  a  yarn  to  me  which  flatly  contradicts 
your  commonplace  idea. 

"The  incident  happened  in  the  good  old 
hanging  days,  when  all  London,  Glasgow, 
Brighton,  or  Edinburgh,  etc.,  turned  out  be 
fore  breakfast  to  see  some  poor  devil  dance  on 
air.  Henry  VIII  had  two  hundred  thousand 
'sturdy  beggars'  put  to  death,  besides  his 
several  wives;  I  don't  remember  now  the  Lon 
don  average  per  week  or  day,  but  while  hang 
ing  continued  a  public  amusement  it  had  long 
ceased  being  a  'first-page  story'  as  far  as  the 
metropolitan  dailies  were  concerned. 

"  Indeed,  the  papers  disdained  to  send  their 
'own  correspondents'  or  reporters  to  such 
small-fry  events  as  the  taking  of  a  man's  or, 
perchance,  a  woman's  life  in  public,  and  en 
trusted  that  part  of  the  daily  grind  to  a 
'flimsy  man,'  who  sent  duplicate  copies  to  all 
the  papers,  morning  and  evening.  The  '  flimsy 
man,'  of  course,  got  so  used  to  the  dope  and  to 
the  eternal  sameness  of  the  thing,  he  could 
dictate  a  first-rate  hanging  yarn  without 
leaving  his  office,  or  using  the  phone — beg 
pardon,  there  were  no  phones  in  those  days. 

214 


"Well,  one  Monday  morning,  at  sunrise,  a 
certain  '  Knight  of  the  Road '  was  to  die  by  a 
tight  cravat  in  a  town  less  than  fifty  miles 
from  London,  and  the  *  flimsy  man'  thought 
it  would  hardly  pay  to  go  up  (or  down)  and 
impersonate  the  eyewitness.  Besides,  he 
knew  the  governor  of  the  jail  personally;  his 
Lordship  was  an  obliging  man  and  would 
gladly  assist  at  a  fake. 

"So  Mr.  Flimsy  wrote  out  his  story  and 
held  it  '  for  release. ' 

"In  the  meantime,  the  doomed  man  went 
through  the  usual  rigmarole:  prayers,  whiskey, 
breakfast,  more  whiskey — march  to  the  gal 
lows.  He  found  an  audience  of  prize-fight 
size  awaiting  him.  The  prison  yard  was  black 
with  people,  all  the  surrounding  roofs,  trees 
and  telegraph  poles  were  alive  with  spectators, 
and  many  poor  chaps  who  had  stood  all  night 
in  line  for  their  betters,  now  sold  standing 
room  at  a  premium. 

"Officialdom,  too,  was  well  represented: 
the  governor  of  the  jail,  his  aides  and  assist 
ants,  the  chief  of  police  in  their  Sunday-go-to- 
meeting  clothes,  and  lots  of  bobbies"  (cops) 

—every  mother's  son  and  daughter  eager  for 
the  hanging,  and  secretly  hoping  that  no  re 
prieve  would  spoil  the  day's  fun,  for  somehow 
the  story  had  got  abroad  that  the  Home  Sec 
retary  had  almost  decided  to  commute  the 
death  sentence  of  this  particular  party. 

"Meanwhile,  preparations  proceeded  at  an 
encouraging  rate:  there  was  the  procession 

215 


headed  by  the  gentlemanly  hangman,  swinging 
a  rope;  then  bobbies,  jailers,  trusties.  The 
doomed  man  walked  rather  jauntily  at  the 
side  of  the  parson,  who  was  mumbling  prayers 
and  looking  benign. 

"Presently  the  procession  stood  under  the 
gallows,  all  necks  craned,  and  a  hush  fell  upon 
the  expectant  crowd  as  the  hangman's  assist 
ant  pulled  the  linen  cap  down  over  his  victim's 
face.  As  he  got  busy  adjusting  the  noose, 
shouts  of  ' reprieve !'  'reprieve!'  went  up.  The 
hangman  looked  at  the  governor  and  the  gov 
ernor  turned  towards  the  gate,  which  had 
opened  to  admit  a  small  messenger  boy  from 
the  telegraph  office. 

"The  boy  was  waving  a  yellow  envelope 
over  his  head,  and  the  governor  signalled  to 
the  hangman  to  wait. 

"At  the  same  time  the  telegraph  boy  was 
hoisted  over  the  shoulders  of  the  crowd  until 
he  reached  the  place  where  the  governor 
stood.  As  the  governor  received  and  opened 
the  dispatch,  there  were  more  hoarse  cries  of 
'reprieve!'  and  they  were  not  cries  of  relief  or 
triumph  either.  Sure,  the  crowd  thought 
itself  cheated.  The  men  and  women  and 
children  (for  there  were  plenty  of  children,  as 
usual)  thought  that  they  had  bet  on  a  horse 
that  didn't  run — a  dead  horse  that  wasn't 
dead  enough,  so  to  speak! 

"But,  presto!  another  change.  The  gover 
nor,  having  glanced  at  the  message,  made  a 
wry  face,  then  crumpled  the  paper  up  in  his 

216 


hand  and  threw  it  on  the  ground,  while  he 
motioned  the  hangman  to  proceed. 

"The  wire  was  from  the  aforementioned 
fakir  and  it  read:  'Please  wire  (prepaid) 
whether  hanging  has  come  off  according  to 
program — Jack. '  But  that's  neither  here  nor 
there.  The  point  is  that  the  man  about  to 
be  put  to  the  worst  use  one  can  possibly  put  a 
living  person  to,  was  allowed  to  think  for 
several  minutes  that  the  Home  Secretary 
had  commuted  his  sentence  of  death,  that 
he,  the  doomed  one,  was  going  to  live  after 
all.  I  am  told  they  actually  stripped  the 
cap  off  his  face,  so  he  could  breathe  freely. 

"Had  that  chap  got  used  to  hanging,  or 
the  hanging  idea,  by  the  time  when  the  cord 
was  once  more  drawn  tight?  Did  he  think 
with  the  French  wag  (or  was  it  an  English 
man?)  'hang  me,  your  Highness?  No,  that 
would  be  the  death  of  me. ' 

"So  in  our  case;  no,  a  thousand  times  no, 
for  in  the  interval  the  poor  soul  had  got  used 
to  living  once  more,  and  a  thousand-and-one 
murderous  thoughts  were  in  his  heart  while 
he  was  being  swung  off  into  eternity." 


217 


STRAY  SAYINGS  OF  MARK 

"I  hate  editors,  for  they  make  me  abandon 
a  lot  of  perfectly  good  English  words." — To 
Campbell-Bannerman  at  the  Metropole  Hotel, 
Vienna.  

"There  are  no  common  people  except  in 
the  highest  spheres  of  society/* — After  at 
tending  a  court  junction  in  Berlin. 


"Wit,  by  itself,  is  of  little  account.  It 
becomes  of  moment  only  when  grounded  on 
wisdom." — Talks  at  the  Berlin  Legation. 

After  paying  off  his  creditors  (in  January, 
1898)  Mark  Twain  got,  for  a  while,  very  gay 
and  wanted  to  buy  everything  in  sight. 
He  was  actually  going  around  looking  for 
"good  things  to  plant  money  on."  Some 
friends  thought  it  their  duty  to  warn  him, 
but  he  shut  them  up  with  the  remark: 

"Don't  alarm  your  sweet  self — no  more 
typesetting  and  Webster  business  for  me. 
I  never  buy  anything  nowadays  that  I  can't 
afford  to  pay  spot  cash  for." 

"How  much  time  do  you  suppose  you  have 
gained  by  writing  '&'  for  'and',  papa?" 
asked  Jean  one  afternoon  at  tea. 

"Not  enough  to  waste  it  on  answers  to 
foolish  questions,"  replied  her  father  severely. 

Then  he  gave  her  a  dollar,  kissed  her  and 
sent  her  away  rejoicing. 

218 


"That  little  blackmailer/'  he  said,  "was 
impertinent  only  to  make  me  mad,  knowing 
full  well  that  later  I  would  chastise  myself 
for  being  a  brute — still  with  a  dollar  fine  I 
got  off  cheap  enough/' 

"He  was  a  King  even  in  his  undershirt 
and  drawers/' — (A  verse  in  one  of  Grill- 
parzer's  Tragedies — which  caused  the  play 
to  be  put  on  the  Index  by  the  censor.)  This 
amused  Mark  hugely.  But  he  had  no  sym 
pathy  with  the  author,  saying:  "He  ought 
to  have  put  pajamas  on  the  cuss." 

Mark  Twain,  when  speaking  of  a  king  was 
fond  of  quoting  Shakespeare's:  "I  have  an 
humour  to  knock  you  indifferently  well." 
(Henry  V.) 

"I  have  been  blowing  the  heads  off  froth 
ing  pots  of  porter."  —Mark  Twain  after 
writing  his  Czar's  Soliloquy. 


A  Hamburg  dealer  in  curiosities  offered 
to  sell  Clemens  two  of  Bismarck's  hairs  for 
a  hundred  marks  a  hair.  Mark  asked  his 
secretary  to  write  back  that,  according  to 
the  most  reliable  statistics,  Bismarck  had 
rejoiced  in  the  possession  of  three  hairs  only 
and  of  that  trinity  enough  had  been  sold 
already  to  cover  the  pates  of  a  whole  row  full 
of  bald  heads  on  a  first  night  in  Broadway, 
New  York. 

219 


EUGENE   FIELD 


EUGENE  FIELD  AND  HIS  TROUBLES 
IN  CHICAGO 

We  had  been  fellow  coffee -drinkers  and 
fellow  pie -eaters  in  Chicago  since  the  early 
eighties,  at  a  time  when  beefsteak,  fried 
potatoes,  apple  pie  and  cheese  constituted  an 
American  table  d'hote  and  whiskey  was  the 
beverage  for  Man.  Women  never  touched 
it  in  those  days,  and  American  wines  were  so 
little  esteemed,  that  a  bottle  was  given  away 
free,  gratis  and  for  nothing  to  each  guest  at 
Palmer  House  dinners. 

Mike  McDonald  was  king  of  Chicago, 
Luther  Laflin  Mills  was  State's  Attorney  and 
Carter  Harrison  was  Mayor  time  and  again. 
All  the  newspaper  men  borrowed  money  from 
Mike  and  drank  at  the  expense  of  Luther 
Laflin  when  he  ran  for  office. 

Eugene  Field,  of  course,  was  the  Sharps 
and  Flats  man  of  the  widely  circulated 
Daily  News:  I  was  a  writer  on  foreign 
affairs  for  the  Chicago  Times,  the  paper 
"that  would  set  the  town  by  the  ears  daily 
or  burst."  The  Times  office  was  diagonally 
across  from  the  News  office,  and  from  the 
News  office  we  turned  to  the  left  into  Ran 
dolph  Street,  where  the  general  hang-out, 
Henrici's,  was  situated. 

223 


Philip  Henrici,  the  owner  of  the  restaurant, 
had  started  life  as  a  journeyman  baker,  and 
was  a  Socialist  or  near-Socialist.  He  would 
gladly  extend  credit  to  any  writer  who  talked 
Karl  Marx  to  him.  So  Gene  and  I,  towards 
the  end  of  each  week,  when  there  was  hardly 
enough  money  left  for  car  fare — ourselves 
had  passes,  but  the  women  needed  coin — 
talked  socialism  by  the  ream,  according  to 
the  extent  of  our  appetite,  asserting  loudly 
that  "Property  was  Theft/'  one  of  Gene's 
bright  ideas,  purloined,  I  suppose. 

Gene's  palate  addressed  itself  almost  ex 
clusively  to  pies  and  coffee  and  that  worked 
his  undoing  in  the  end.  For  Henrici's  coffee 
was  stewing  all  day,  which  made  it  no  healthy 
drink,  and  they  served  a  big  chunk  of  cheese 
with  every  ten-cent  parcel  of  pie — a  diet 
that  would  have  given  indigestion  to  an 
ostrich  in  the  long  run. 

And  Gene's  stomach  was  "as  touchy  as  his 
bank  account,"  he  used  to  say. 

I  said  good-by  to  him  in  January,   1888. 

"First  thing  you  do  when  you  strike  Lon 
don,  get  me  a  job  there,"  he  said.  "The  pay 
envelope  in  this  here  town  is  too  small  for 
words,  let  alone  a  man  with  a  growing  family. 
If  I  once  get  into  London  and  establish  a  repu 
tation  there,  I  can  lay  down  the  law  to  Lawson 
(publisher  of  the  News)  and  squeeze  this  bunch 
here  as  they  have  been  squeezing  me." 

That  wasn't  meant  as  viciously  as  it 
sounded.  The  News  paid  as  well,  or  a  little 

224 


better,  than  the  other  Chicago  papers,  but 
the  Chicago  newspaper  man  that  made  from 
forty  to  fifty  dollars  a  week  was  a  cracker- 
jack-first-rater  in  those  days. 

One  trouble  with  Eugene  Field  was  that, 
at  his  office,  he  devoted  too  much  time  to 
practical  jokes,  private  versifying  and  general 
tomfoolery.  So  when  he  had  to  do  his 
column,  his  fagged  brain  needed  the  stimu 
lant  of  coffee  or  whiskey,  or  he  thought  it 
did.  And  black  coffee  was  usually  sent  for 
across  the  street.  Moreover,  he  was  very 
fond  of  the  theatre  and  wasted  much  time 
chatting  behind  the  scenes,  in  the  audi 
torium  and  with  the  managers  in  front.  In 
short,  he  could  have  done  much  more  work 
than  he  did,  but  it's  doubtful  whether  that 
would  have  increased  his  compensation,  which 
was  as  high  as  the  paper  thought  it  could 
afford — i.  e.,  as  low  as  could  in  decency  be 
offered  to  a  man  with  Field's  following. 

In  New  York,  I  heard  of  Eugene's  health- 
troubles  off  and  on,  but  thought  little  of 
these  reports  since  I  had  never  known  him 
otherwise  than  active  and  laughing  at  the 
ills  human  flesh  is  heir  to. 

If  I  had  known,  or  suspected,  that  Eugene 
had  a  tendency  to  lung  trouble,  I  would 
have  written  to  Mrs.  Field  warning  her 
against  the  British  climate  in  winter  time, 
for  I  had  lived  in  London  during  several 
winters  and  knew  what  rain  and  sleet  and 
fog  meant  there,  while  Gene's  Chicago  friends 

225 


had  not  the  slightest  notion  of  English 
weather  conditions. 

In  1889  I  had  been  in  Paris  for  a  couple  of 
weeks,  helping  to  establish  an  English  news 
service  there,  when  Davison  Dalziel,  after 
wards  British  M.  P.,  but  in  our  Chicago 
days  editor  of  the  News  Letter  there,  told 
me  that  Eugene  Field  had  come  to  London 
with  his  family  and  meant  to  set  the  Thames 
on  fire  with  his  jokes  and  verses. 

"He  lives  at  20  Alfred  Street,  Bedford 
Square,"  said  Davison  Dalziel,  "and  doesn't 
live  well,  I  am  afraid.  Three  boys,  a  wife 
and  a  female  relative  into  the  bargain — 
it's  too  much  for  one  poor  pencil-pusher,  a 
stranger  to  London  ways." 

To  show  how  Gene  was  forever  hampered 
by  the  lack  of  funds,  it  is  only  necessary  to 
point  out  that  his  salary  was  paid  over  to 
Mrs.  Field  week  after  week,  and  that  Gene 
had  the  time  of  his  life  persuading  the  cashier 
to  let  him  have  a  few  dollars  in  advance. 
I  don't  know  whether  the  News  sent  Gene's 
salary  to  Mrs.  Field  while  they  were  in  Lon 
don.  At  any  rate,  what  Gene  got  out  of  it 
was  entirely  inadequate  and  he  had  no  chance 
to  add  to  his  salary  in  England. 


226 


MORE   OF  EUGENE    FIELD'S  TRIALS 
IN  LONDON 

When  I  saw  Gene  in  London  about  Novem 
ber,  or  the  end  of  October,  1889,  his  enthu 
siasm  for  life  in  highbrow  Grubb  Street  was 
already  on  the  wane.  Funds  were  low,  so 
were  his  spirits,  and  the  hopes  he  had  set  on 
James  Gordon  Bennett's  enterprise  had  come 
to  naught. 

Mr.  Bennett  had  been  running  the — or  a — 
New  York  Herald  in  London  for  some  time, 
kidding  himself  that  London  would  accept  a 
daily  with  so  incongruous  a  title  as  a  rival  to 
the  Morning  Post,  Daily  Telegraph  and  so 
forth.  And  Eugene  Field  tried  to  persuade 
Bennett's  representative,  that  it  could  be 
done  provided  that  he  had  a  column  or  a 
column  and  a  half  on  the  editorial  page.  His 
London  Sharps  and  Flats  were  to  be  syndi 
cated  in  America,  the  Chicago  Daily  News 
having  the  preference.  And  Gene  hoped  to 
get  at  least  two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  a 
week  out  of  the  enterprise. 

If  he  only  had  the  money  to  go  to  Paris 
and  stay  there  long  enough  to  plead  with 
James  Gordon  in  person !  But  James  Gordon, 
already  a  middle-aged  man,  continued  to 
play  the  young  buck  and  was  seldom  in  his 
office  for  two  consecutive  days. 

At  one  time,  when  Eugene  had  a  hundred 
dollars  laid  aside  for  Paris,  he  received  word, 
just  in  the  nick  of  time,  that  the  "Commo- 

227 


dore"  was  off  on  his  yacht  for  Monte  Carlo, 
and  would  probably  stay  there — "until  they 
kick  him  out/*  snapped  Eugene  savagely. 
"I  hope  they  do. " 

And  a  week  later  he  was  much  elated 
because  they  had  done  so.  At  the  Eccentric 
Club  he  let  the  yarn  loose  before  an  audience 
dying  with  laughter. 

"My  unwilling  Chief/'  he  began,  "James 
Gordon,  I  mean,  went  to  the  Casino  in  Monte 
Carlo  in  a  high  state  of  intoxication,  and 
raised  Hades  with  all  the  trimmings  imagin 
able,  until  thrown  out.  Then,  still  yelling 
for  'the  frog-eaters'  blood  and  Monsieur 
Blanc's  in  particular,  he  was  carried  to  the 
yacht,  relieved  of  his  clothes,  and  treated 
to  a  cold  bath,  his  usual  medicine  under  like 
circumstances.  After  the  bath  he  put  on  a 
kimona  and  airs  and  bawled  for  his  secre 
tary.  That  individual  was  yanked  out  of 
bed  by  the  ears  and  Bennett  dictated  to  him 
a  proclamation  in  the  style  of  a  South  Ameri 
can  general  starting  a  revolution. 

'Monsieur  Blanc  and  his  associates/  de 
manded  the  proclamation,  'must  send  three 
of  the  directors  to  Mr.  Bennett's  yacht, 
making  abject  apology  for  the  insults  heaped 
upon  Mr.  Bennett.  And  unless  this  apology 
is  forthcoming  without  evasion  or  delay,  the 
Commodore  will  be  pleased  to  blow  the  Casino 
into  smithereens — he  has  the  guns,  powder 
and  shot. ' 

228 


"At  nine  o'clock  in  the  morning  the  direc 
tors  were  handed  this  ultimatum  and  they 
had  to  act  by  eleven  or  prepare  to  meet  their 
maker,  roulettes  and  all. 

"Naturally  the  directors  thought  it  a 
drunken  joke,  but  at  eleven  sharp,  Bennett 
began  bombarding  the  Casino — with  blank 
cartridges.  Hence  at  eleven-ten,  five  direc 
tors  instead  of  three  raced  to  the  Harbor  in 
carriages,  and  tumbled  head  over  heels  into 
a  white-flagged  steam-pinnace. 

"Well,"  said  Field,  "Bennett  kept  them 
maneuvering  around  his  yacht  for  a  good 
fifteen  minutes,  while  clearing  decks  and  with 
much  ostentation  making  ready  for  bombard 
ment.  When  he  finally  did  admit  the  direc 
tors,  he  exacted  even  harder  terms  than  he 
had  first  proposed,  namely:  A  perpetual  card 
of  admission  for  James  Gordon  Bennett  and 
friends  and,  for  the  present,  a  solemn  invita 
tion  to  Bennett  to  come  to  the  Casino  and 
do  as  he  liked  there. 

"After  this,"  concluded  Eugene,  "I  sup 
pose  these  directors  lent  him  their  best  grand 
piano  for  the  uses  he  put  Phil  May's  mother's 
piano  to." 

The  above  was  a  good  story,  but  unprint 
able  at  the  time,  and  it  was  all  Eugene  ever 
got  out  of  Bennett.  So  most  other  London 
enterprises,  Gene  tried  to  float,  proved  barren. 


229 


GENE,  A  "SUCCESS  OF  CURIOSITY' 

The  fact  was,  poor  Eugene  was  no  business 
man  and,  unlike  Mrs.  Clemens,  pretty  Mrs. 
Field,  as  far  as  I  could  make  out,  had  no  eye 
or  head  for  business  either.  His  London 
writings  hardly  ever  appealed  to  a  more 
international  audience  than  Chicago  and  the 
West,  willy-nilly,  furnished.  Syndicating  was 
in  its  infancy  and  the  papers  printed  nothing 
but  news  and  again  news.  Even  the  New 
York  Herald's  Sunday  edition  contained 
hardly  a  line  unconnected  with  the  news  of 
the  day.  And  Eugene  said  himself  he  was 
no  newsmonger.  Then  London  society,  or 
near-society,  tried  to  make  him  out  a  funny 
man.  He  was  much  in  demand  as  a  diner-out, 
and  like  an  honest  man,  paid  for  his  dinners 
and  suppers  in  "his  own  coin/'  stories  and 
jokes. 

These  stories  were  all  extravaganzas  of 
the  most  extravagant  kind.  "I  talked  to 
the  duchesses  as  I  talk  to  my  children  when 
in  pinafores,"  he  used  to  tell  me,  "and  the 
harder  I  lie,  the  more  natural  my  American 
yarns  sound  to  them,  for  their  ignorance  of 
America  is  as  profound  as  mine  of  Mars." 

Poor  Gene,  I  am  afraid,  often  accepted 
dinner  invitations  "to  save  grubbing  at 
home,"  for  his  finances  were  on  the  down 
grade  most  of  the  time.  In  his  talks  with 
American  friends  he  often  regretted  having 
left  Chicago,  "where  one  can  always  make  a 

230 


touch,  if  not  at  the  office,  then  in  the  Clark 
Street  Emporium"  (meaning  Mike  McDon 
ald's  saloon).  And  all  the  time  his  health 
severely  suffered  from  the  damp  and  wet, 
the  sleet  and  raw  winds,  the  river  fogs  and 
the  smoke  fogs. 

"I  thought  if  I  got  away  from  coffee  and 
Chicago  pies,  my  stomach  would  act  decently 
again,"  he  moaned  sometimes;  "but  the 
eternal  tea  of  Britain  is  as  bad  as  our  coffee, 
and  its  meat  pies  are  even  more  alluring  and 
digestion-disturbing.  I  will  never  get  well 
until  I  can  pay  a  cook  a  hundred  dollars  a 
week  and  a  doctor  fifty  to  tell  me  what  to 
avoid." 

There  was  a  tendency  in  London  then, 
among  literary  people  and  others,  to  treat 
American  men  of  letters  not  with  scant 
courtesy  exactly,  but  as  successes  of  curiosity. 
Eugene  felt  that  after  a  while  and  it  made 
him  sore  on  London  and  made  him  long  still 
more  for  the  fleshpots  of  Chicago.  '  Of 
course  he  returned  a  broader-minded  and  a 
better  informed  man,  but  consider  the  cost 
to  him!  The  English  climate,  so  healthful 
to  Londoners  as  to  make  the  town's  death 
rate  the  lowest  in  Europe,  wrecked  what 
was  left  of  Eugene's  frail  health.  But  for 
London  he  might  have  lived  ten  or  more 
years  longer.  Yet  he  never  could  forgive 
Bennett  for  turning  him  down,  though  I 
often  explained  to  him  that  his  application 
may  have  never  reached  Bennett's  own  desk. 

231 


In  a  measure,  too,  Eugene  Field  was  re 
sponsible  for  many  of  his  discomforts  in 
London,  for  he  allowed  a  friend  to  select 
most  dismal  quarters  for  him  and  stuck  to 
them  instead  of  getting  out  and  moving  to 
one  of  the  suburbs.  "Richmond  would  be 
the  place  for  you,"  we  often  told  him. 

"I  am  the  Duke  of  Bedford's  tenant," 
he  joked,  "and  his  Grace  is  pleased  to  have 
my  name  on  his  rent  roll,  so  what  can  I  do  ?" 
And  then  he  would  go  into  the  Bedford 
family  history  and  count  up  its  fortunes,  its 
land,  and  estates,  in  London  and  out.  "Ah," 
he  would  say,  "it  stands  to  reason  that 
among  Bedford's  ancestors  were  no  penny-a- 
liners  or  blue  stockings." 


232 


DIRE  CONSEQUENCES  OF  AMERICAN 
HORSEPLAY 

At  the  time  when  Eugene  Field  was  in 
London,  Oscar  Wilde  and  Henry  Irving  were 
undoubtedly  leaders  of  the  intellectual  cir 
cles,  and  with  both  of  these  men  Gene  had 
quarreled.  No  open  rupture,  but  he  had 
played  practical  jokes  on  them — during  their 
American  tours — something  an  Englishmen 
never  forgives.  And  if  he  wanted  to,  his 
friends  and  compatriots  wouldn't  let  him. 

It  may  be  true  or  not  that  Henry  Irving 
laughed  at  Gene's  caricatures  of  himself, 
done  before  his  very  eyes,  as  well  as  behind 
his  back  in  Chicago,  but  that  doesn't  argue 
that  Irving  did  not  resent  Gene's  merry 
making.  Irving  had  many  eccentricities  in 
person  and  speech,  but  still  more  dignity. 
And  the  dignity  of  his  profession  was  very 
dear  to  his  heart.  Hence  there  was  no  com 
panionship  between  the  Chicago  writer  and 
the  great  English  actor-manager  while  Gene 
was  trying  to  establish  himself  in  London. 
If  he  had  come  to  London  under  an  engage 
ment  as  critic  or  editorial  writer,  it  would 
have  been  different,  but  Gene  was  only  a 
struggling  literary  man  like  so  many  others. 
So  the  Henry  Irving  literary  circles  were 
closed  against  the  Chicago  newspaper  man  as 
a  matter  of  course. 

But  that  didn't  sour  Gene's  judgment  of 
Irving's  art.  I  remember  a  Macbeth  night 

233 


at  the  Lyceum  Theatre.  As  a  production, 
Irving's  Macbeth  was  the  last  word  in  stage 
effects.  I  reminded  Gene  of  the  sensation 
caused  in  Chicago  by  the  red  velvet  draw 
curtain  which  Irving  had  brought  from  Lon 
don.  Up  to  that  time  Chicago  had  only 
known  paper  or  canvas  curtains,  variously 
painted. 

"Look  at  the  scenery/'  Gene  kept  on  say 
ing  at  the  Lyceum.  "It's  all  solid,  vast, 
monumental.  Chicago  would  go  crazy  about 
that  set  piece." 

In  the  lobby  we  met  several  critics,  among 
them  the  critic  of  the  Standard.  The  Standard 
man  repeated  his  published  charge,  namely, 
that  Irving  was  sinning  against  tradition, 
that  Macready  and  Kemble  alone  had  under 
stood  how  to  present  Macbeth.  Irving,  this 
critic  insisted,  ought  to  know  "that  his 
Macbeth  was  unacceptable  to  the  best  judg 
ment." 

"  Best  judgment — fiddlesticks !  You  merely 
state  your  personal  opinion.  We  all  do  so. 
For  my  part  I  like  Irving's  reading  with  its 
poetry  and  romanticism,"  said  Field  hotly. 
"The  King  of  Scots  was  full  of  irresolution, 
but  was  often  dejected  in  spirits — Irving's 
portrait  of  a  shrinking,  faltering  King  is 
what  it  ought  to  be,  since  it  holds  the  mirror 
up  to  history.  As  to  tradition — that  be 
damned — it  is  largely  in  the  critic's  mind 
and  nowhere  else,  except  perhaps  with  some 
dotard,  gabbing  about  old  times." 

cm 


That  was  Gene  all  over.  If  the  cause  was 
just  he  would  as  lief  fight  the  battles  of  a 
man  like  Irving,  who  ignored  him,  as  of  his 
best  friend. 

Here  is  another  illustration  of  that  golden 
rule — by  contrary. 

He  liked  Ellen  Terry,  liked  her  immensely, 
but  he  did  not  fail  to  criticise  her  severely. 
You  may  remember  Macbeth's  line: 

"  What  if  we  fail?" 

Lady  Macbeth  answers: 

"We  fail- 
Now  Terry  pronounced   these   two  words 
as  if  she  meant  to  indicate — well  if  we  fail 
there's  an  end  to  it. 

"All  wrong,"  said  Gene.  "She  ought  to 
pronounce  it: 

"/TV  fail!" 

"It  ought  to  sound  like:  'Failure  is  a 
thing  not  to  be  thought  of. ' 

"I  will  tell  Terry  about  it  when  I  see  her," 
he  said.  Whether  he  carried  out  that  inten 
tion  or  not  I  don't  know.  He  always  spoke 
about  Ellen  Terry  as  the  wonderful  woman 
on  the  stage.  '  Think  what  she  makes  her 
body  do,  how  she  makes  it  respond  to  the 
demands  of  every  role.  Her  eyes  are  pale, 
her  nose  is  too  long,  her  mouth  is  only  ordin 
ary,  yet  she  makes  these  faulty  features  tell 
on  the  stage,  and  the  audience  never  knows 
how  deficient  she  is  as  to  mouth,  eyes  and 
nose.  And  her  complexion  isn't  good— 
naturally  that  doesn't  matter  so  much.  Her 

235 


hair  is  an  indecent  tow  color.  And  how  she 
makes  that  lean  and  bony  figure  of  hers  cut 
ice  is  wonderful.  I  forgot  about  her  feet. 
But  her  hands  are  too  large  for  a  woman. 
Indeed  they  are  masculine,  yet  her  audience 
is  never  allowed  to  see  that.  She  gets  you, 
and  she  entrances  you  by  her  innate  grace — 
such  grace  as  graces  the  world  only  once  in 
a  hundred  years." 

His  troubles  in  America  with  Oscar  Wilde 
closed  another  set  of  literary  salons  in  Eu 
gene's  face  while  in  London.  For  it  must 
be  remembered  that  Oscar's  disgrace  took 

Elace  years  later,  in  1895,  and  that  u.itil 
is  quarrel  with  Lord  Queensbury,  he  was  a 
figure  to  be  reckoned  with  in  London  society. 
He  was  at  least  as  important  in  certain 
social  circles  as  Lillie  Langtry,  and  was  a 
Mason-brother  of  the  Prince  of  Wales. 

"What  a  fool  I  was,  estranging  Oscar," 
Gene  confessed.  "At  the  time  I  thought  it 
exquisitely  funny,  but  the  British  can't  see 
through  our  American  horseplay.  They 
think  it  undignified  and  that's  enough  to  kill 
even  the  loudest  laugh. " 

"What  did  you  do  to  Oscar?"   I   asked. 

"The  day  before  his  arrival  in  Denver, 
where  I  was  doing  the  Tribune  Primer,  I 
impersonated  Oscar  in  the  mask  of  Bun- 
thorne  of  Patience,  driving  through  Denver 
in  an  elegant  landau  and  pair,  and  creating 
a  riot  of  mirth.  Oscar  thought  it  a  good 
advertisement  for  his  lecture,  and  as  a  matter 

236 


of  fact  it  was,  but  as  to  the  humor  of  the 
thing,  he  hadn't  the  slightest  notion,  and 
treated  me,  who  had  made  hundreds  for  him, 
with  studied  coldness. " 

"Yet,"  continued  Gene,  "for  all  I  know 
he  may  be  living  on  the  proceeds  of  my  joke 
even  now,  for  they  say  he  earns  next  to 
nothing  and  depends  on  the  money  he  saved 
in  the  United  States,  from  the  proceeds  of 
his  tour.  But  give  the  devil  his  due,  Oscar 
does  the  Prince-chap  business  in  great  style. 
His  game  is  to  impress  ordinary  folks,  the 
grocer  and  the  glovemaker,  that  a  litterateur 
is  not  necessarily  a  Bohemian  living  in  a 
garret,  sporting  frayed  collars,  having  no 
money  for  cigarettes  in  the  morning  and  no 
dinner  money  in  the  evening.  And  to  demon 
strate,  he  dines  at  the  swellest  hotels  and 
restaurants  and  tries  to  cut  a  big  swath 
everywhere. " 

On  another  occasion,  Gene  told  a  few 
things  about  Oscar  that  he  had  heard  at  the 
Herald  office.  "Our  fine  American  girl, 
Mary  Anderson,  has  given  that  fop  Oscar 
a  commission,  duly  signed,  to  write  a  drama 
for  her.  It's  going  to  be  called  'The  Duchess 
of  Padua.'  Oscar  may  make  five  or  ten 
thousand  dollars  out  of  it.  If  I  wasn't  by 
nature  so  much  inclined  to  humor,  I  might 
get  an  honorable  commission  like  that.  But 
people  think  I  am  only  fit  for  cracking  jokes 
and  writing  jocular  and  sentimental  poetry." 

23? 


"Well,"  I  said,  "Gene,  everybody  to  his 
groove.  While  Oscar  does  the  highfalutin', 
you  make  people  laugh.  If  you  really  want 
to  make  money  you  ought  to  go  on  the  stage. 
There  your  gift  of  mimicry  and  imitation 
ought  to  get  you  big  returns,  for  you  could 
hold  your  own  with  Goodwin  and  Henry 
Dixey." 

"I  have  been  told  that  before,"  said  Gene; 
"they  drummed  it  into  my  head  in  Denver 
and  in  Chicago,  but  somehow  or  other  I 
prefer  the  writing  game  to  any  other,  even 
if  it  keeps  one  on  a  level  with  proletarians." 

Though  not  mixing  with  Oscar  Wilde's 
crowd,  Gene  heard  a  lot  of  gossip  concerning 
the  author  of  "Salome,"  and  "Lady  Winde- 
mere's  Fan."  Likewise  some  stories  about 
Lady  Wilde,  Oscar's  mother,  a  most  eccen 
tric  woman,  whose  motto  was  said  to  be: 
"Only  shopkeeper's  are  respectable." 

"Why,  in  his  own  mother's  house,  Oscar 
started  a  'Society  for  the  Suppression  of 
Virtue/  "  vowed  Gene. 

Then  there  was  the  famous  yarn  about 
original  sin  that  we  heard  right  off  the  griddle. 
It  ran  this  way: 

Said  a  Famous  Beauty,  friend  of  the  Prince 
of  Wales,  to  Wilde: 

"Is  it  not  a  fact  that  original  sin  began 
with  Adam  and  carne  down  direct  to  you, 
Oscar?" 

Oscar,  shielding  his  mouth  with  his  hand, 
for  he  had  bad  teeth,  responded: 

238 


"No,  my  dear,  sin  commenced  with  Eve, 
Cleopatra  carried  it  on  and  with  our  dear 
Lillie  the  future  of  sin  may  be  safely  left, 
being  in  expert  hands." 


FIELD'S  LIBRARY  OF  HUMOR 

While  in  Germany,  Gene  had  read  up  on 
ideas  of  humor,  and  entertained  the  notion 
that  a  "History  of  Humor"  would  prove  a 
good  seller.  The  book  was  to  start  with 
"The  Smile,"  such  chapters  to  follow  as: 
"  Feeling  Good; "  "  Pleasant  Thoughts ; " 
"Why  We  Laugh  Over  the  Ridiculous?" 
"Whims;"  "Practical  Jokes;"  "Fixed  Ideas;" 
"Naivett;"  "Blue-stockings;"  "Old  Maids," 
and  so  forth. 

He  jotted  these  chapters  down  on  the 
marble  top  of  our  table  in  the  Cafe  Royal, 
and  I  copied  the  list.  I  think  the  above  is 
pretty  complete. 


240 


THOSE  GERMAN  PROFESSORS 

When  Gene  Field  returned  from  Hanover, 
where  he  had  placed  his  children  in  school, 
he  was  full  of  the  German  professors  he  had 
met. 

I  reminded  him  that  Lord  Palmerston  had 
called  Germany  "that  damned  land  of  Pro 
fessors." 

"I  know  the  woods  are  full  of  them.  I 
have  seen  them  in  droves,  good,  bad  and 
indifferent,  but  I  put  my  kids  with  the 
human  kind  of  professor,  and,  besides,  those 
youngsters  can  take  care  of  themselves.  I 
am  told  of  a  private  tutor  who,  on  applying 
for  a  job  at  a  country  house,  thought  his 
future  paymaster  as  big  a  brute  as  himself. 
Accordingly,  while  the  rich  man  was  drawing 
up  a  contract,  this  tutor  fell  upon  the  boys, 
his  future  charges,  as  he  thought,  and  began 
to  thrash  them  without  any  cause  whatever 
in  the  most  cruel  and  barbarous  fashion. 

"The  children's  howls  brought  the  father 
to  the  scene,  who  seized  the  scoundrel  by 
the  neck  and  demanded  what  he  meant  by 
assaulting  his  boys. 

'Well/  answered  the  tutor,  'I  meant  to 
show  them  right  away  that  I  am  master. ' 

'And  I  will  show  you  who  is  master 
here,'  shouted  the  father,  and  gave  that 
tutor  the  licking  of  his  life.  Then  he  kicked 

241 


him  out  of  doors,  and  said:  'Now  run,  for 
in  five  minutes  I  will  loose  my  dogs,  and  if 
they  catch  you,  God  have  mercv  upon  your 
soul/  " 


242 


EUGENE  FIELD  AND  NORTHERN 
LORE 

While  in  London  Eugene  Field  was  always 
talking  about  the  Orkney  Islands,  the  drear 
iest,  foggiest,  most  uninteresting  patches  of 
land  in  the  wet  you  want  to  see.  He  had 
discovered  somehow  that  Queen  Mary  of 
Scots  had  created  that  brute  Bothwell,  duke 
of  Orkney,  a  title  reserved  for  members  of 
the  reigning  family.  Hence  her  bestowal  of 
the  title  helped  to  emphasize  still  more  the 
hatred  of  the  nobles  against  her  husband. 
He  chewed  the  matter  over  for  a  month, 
then  one  rainy  afternoon,  at  the  Cafe  Royal, 
he  got  it  off  his  chest. 

"I  want  to  go  to  the  Orkney  Islands  to 
find  traces  of  Bothwell  and  perhaps  get  a  new 
angle  on  that  fearless  lass — as  fearless  as  she 
was  vindictive — Mary.  When  the  Queen  was 
taken  prisoner,  Bothwell  made  for  the  Ork 
neys  and  chose  one  of  the  smaller  islands  to 
assemble  a  piratical  navy.  Instead  of  steal 
ing  queens,  he  meant  to  steal  goods  and 
chattels  of  merchantmen  passing  the  Northern 
Seas  and  the  Channel.  He  had  been  a  pirate 
before  Mary  took  him  up  and  was  a  robber 
baron  by  birth.  Wonder  if  his  remains  rest 
in  the  Orkneys  or  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea. " 

"He  was  buried  in  some  small  Danish 
seaboard  town  and  in  a  church  at  that." 

"Perhaps  he  died  in  the  odor  of  sanctity," 
laughed  Gene;  "that  would  make  it  only  the 

243 


more  interesting.  Anyhow  from  the  Orkneys 
I  can  easily  get  to  Denmark  and  from  there 
I  can  almost  swim  over  to  Sweden.  I  want 
to  dig  deep  into  Northern  lore — there  are 
unexplored  tons  of  it,  full  of  the  most  sublime 
poetry,  and  when  I  return  to  America  and 
have  time  to  look  over  my  notes,  there 
will  be  something  doing,  I  promise  you,  my 
boy." 

Returning  to  Bothwell,  Field  asked: 

"By  the  way,  I  read  somewhere  that  Mary 
was  divorced  from  Bothwell  while  in  English 
captivity. " 

"If  you  can  get  hold  of  the  Vatican  records 
about  that  divorce,"  I  answered,  "the  fortune 
of  your  book  amongst  scholars  is  made.  What 
do  you  suppose  was  the  cause  of  the  divorce 
granted  by  the  Roman  Court?" 

"Why,  the  murder  of  Mary's  second  hus 
band,  the  Earl  of  Darnley,  at  which  she  and 
Bothwell  had  connived. " 

"Wrong." 

"Or  the  fact  that  Bothwell  was  a  Protestant, 
a  heretic. " 

"Wrong  again." 

"Then  because  Bothwell  was  still  the  hus 
band  of  Ann  Thorssen  when  he  married  the 
Queen." 

"Wrong  the  third  time.  The  divorce  was 
granted  on  evidence  that  Bothwell  had  inter 
course  with  Mary  before  marriage. " 

244 


One  of  these  Northern  lore  stories  Field 
wrote  for  a  little  book  of  Christmas  tales, 
but  having  been  unable  to  carry  out  his 
intention  as  above  set  forth,  the  yarn  was  of 
small  account.  It  lacked  local  color  and  the 
naturalness  that  made  most  of  his  stories 
so  delightful. 


245 


LITTLE  BOY  BLUE 

It  has  been  forgotten  by  this  time  that 
Gene  lost  a  son  while  the  boy  was  at  school 
in  Hanover — the  most  promising  of  his  boys, 
it  was  said.  But  at  the  time  when  the  griev 
ing  father  brought  the  body  of  his  boy  home, 
a  great  many  lovers  of  his  poetry  associated 
the  child's  death  with  the  famous  "Little 
Boy  Blue." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  "Little  Boy 
Blue"  was  not  the  echo  of  a  fond  parent's 
sorrow,  but  was  written  when  all  his  children 
were  flourishing.  At  the  time  Gene  was 
simply  in  a  sentimental  mood.  Maybe,  too, 
some  newspaper  story  he  read  was  respon 
sible.  At  any  rate,  "Little  Boy  Blue"  was 
published  and  admired  and  beloved  a  year 
or  two,  or  longer,  before  Gene  went  to  Europe, 
and  while  all  his  children  enjoyed  good 
health. 


246 


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